ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
Xenacoelomorpha: a case of independent nervous system centralization?
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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16 citing papers in PubMed, 45 citations in OpenAlex.
- Revisiting nerve nets: functional organization and evolutionary implications.The EMBO journal · 2026Review
- Review
- Molecular evidence from xenacoelomorph gonopore formation supports homology with the bilaterian anus.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Dynamics of neural activity in early nervous system evolution.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2024Article
- Acoelomorph flatworm monophyly is a long-branch attraction artefact obscuring a clade of Acoela and Xenoturbellida.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The Acoel nervous system: morphology and development.Neural development · 2024Review
- Genome assembly of the acoel flatworm Symsagittifera roscoffensis, a model for research on body plan evolution and photosymbiosis.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Article
- Article
- Acoel Single-Cell Transcriptomics: Cell Type Analysis of a Deep Branching Bilaterian.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Neural architecture and regeneration in the acoelProceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Does regeneration recapitulate phylogeny? Planaria as a model of body-axis specification in ancestral eumetazoa.Communicative & integrative biology · 2020Article
- Xenacoelomorpha Survey Reveals That All 11 Animal Homeobox Gene Classes Were Present in the First Bilaterians.Genome biology and evolution · 2018Article
- SALMFamide2 and serotonin immunoreactivity in the nervous system of some acoels (Xenacoelomorpha).Journal of morphology · 2018Article
- Article
- A new species of Xenoturbella from the western Pacific Ocean and the evolution of Xenoturbella.BMC evolutionary biology · 2017Article
- Introduction to 'Homology and convergence in nervous system evolution'.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Centralized nervous systems (NSs) and complex brains are among the most important innovations in the history of life on our planet. In this context, two related questions have been formulated: How did complex NSs arise in evolution, and how many times did this occur? As a step towards finding an answer, we describe the NS of several representatives of the Xenacoelomorpha, a clade whose members show different degrees of NS complexity. This enigmatic clade is composed of three major taxa: acoels, nemertodermatids and xenoturbellids. Interestingly, while the xenoturbellids seem to have a rather 'simple' NS (a nerve net), members of the most derived group of acoel worms clearly have ganglionic brains. This interesting diversity of NS architectures (with different degrees of compaction) provides a unique system with which to address outstanding questions regarding the evolution of brains and centralized NSs. The recent sequencing of xenacoelomorph genomes gives us a privileged vantage point from which to analyse neural evolution, especially through the study of key gene families involved in neurogenesis and NS function, such as G protein-coupled receptors, helix-loop-helix transcription factors and Wnts. We finish our manuscript proposing an adaptive scenario for the origin of centralized NSs (brains).
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.