Nematostella vectensis

Ancient stem cells at work. Signaling was fiiUy operational over 550 million years ago in the phylum Cnidaria. Extant representative descendants are the eumetazoan Hydra polyps, the colonial marine hydroids, Hydractinia, and the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis (Anthozoa, within Cnidaria) (Figure 37). 

Additional chitinase CBD proteins (chitin-binding domains) encoded by the amphioxus genome are of antimicrobial substances. The other urochordate Ciona intestinalis possesses three VCBP3-Uke genes (vide supra) and releases some 40 CBDs. In the Citidaria phylum (anemones, corals, jellyfish), Nematostella vectensis... 

Matus DG, Magie C, Pang K, Martindale MQ, Thomsen GH. The Hedgehog gene family of the cnidarians, Nematostella vectensis, and implications ftn understanding metazoan Hedgehog pathway evolution. Dev Biol. 2008 313 501-18. 

Wolenski FS, Garbati MR, Lubinski J, Traylor-Knowles N, Dresselhaus E, Stefanik DJ, Goucher H, Finnerty JAR, Gilmore TD. Characterization of the core elements of the NF-kB signaling pathway of the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. Mol Cell Biol. 2011 31 1076-87. 

Layden MJ, Boekhout M, Maitindale MQ. Nematostella vectensis achaete-scute homolog NvAshA regulates embryonic ectodermal neurogenesis and represents an ancient component of the metazoan neural specification pathway. Development. 2012 139 1013-22. 

Pankow S, Bamberger C. The p53 tumor suppressor-like protein nvp63 mediates selective germ cell death in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. PLoS One. 2007 2 (9) c782. 

Uda K, Ellington WR, Suzuki T. Adverse array of creatine kinase and arginine kinase isoform genes is present in the starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis, a cnidarians model system for studying developmental evolution. Gene. 2012 497 214-27. 

---