more forensic genetics – and the origins of multicellular animals

When I'm lecturing about animal diversity and the origins of the multicellular animals (aka metazoans), I point out the similarity between the single-celled protozoans called choanoflagellates and the choanocytes (or 'feeding cells') of sponges. The textbook interpretation is that choanoflagellates may have shared a common ancestor with metazoans, and there's an increasing amount of genetic […]

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