Gene Regulatory Mechanisms in Development and Evolution: Insights from Echinoderms

Dr. Charles A. Ettensohn, Professor of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA), is one of the world's leading researchers using sea urchins and other echinoderms as experimental models to study mechanisms of embryogenesis. Over the past 30 years his laboratory has made major contributions to developmental biology. His current work focuses on the architecture, function, and evolution of developmental gene regulatory networks, with the overarching goal of elucidating the genetic control of anatomy.
Dr. Ettensohn has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed articles, co-organized multiple international conferences on echinoderm development, and currently serves on the editorial boards of BMC Genomics, Genesis, and Faculty of 1000 (Biology).

Sea urchins and other echinoderms, which have been studied intensively by developmental biologists for more than a century, are currently among the most prominent models for elucidating the genomic regulatory processes that control embryogenesis and the evolution of those processes. This volume contains reviews from the world's leading researchers who are using echinoderms to address these questions. Chapters focus on gene regulatory networks that drive the differentiation and morphogenesis of major embryonic tissues such as the skeleton, muscle, nervous system, immune system, pigment cells, and germ line, and on evolutionary insights from comparative studies of these networks across echinoderms and other taxa. Other chapters comprehensively review the architecture and evolution of the cell signaling pathways that establish the early embryonic axes and on recent evolutionary changes in gene networks that have led to dramatic changes in the life history modes of echinoderms. This volume provides a comprehensive, current picture of exciting research at the interface between developmental genomics and evolution from one of the research communities leading this work.