Jena Researchers Trigger Body Axes Across 2 Phyla, Pushing Organiser Back 700 Million Years
Updated
Updated · BIOENGINEER.ORG · Jun 17
Jena Researchers Trigger Body Axes Across 2 Phyla, Pushing Organiser Back 700 Million Years
2 articles · Updated · BIOENGINEER.ORG · Jun 17
Summary
University of Jena scientists transplanted blastoporal tissue in comb jelly embryos and induced a secondary body axis, extending the classic “organiser” mechanism to one of the earliest-diverging animal lineages.
Xenotransplants then carried organiser tissue from comb jellies into sea anemone embryos, where it also initiated axis formation—described as the first cross-phyla demonstration of organiser activity.
The team also identified a gene required for organiser formation in sea anemones, linking the cellular effect to conserved signalling networks that control early embryonic patterning.
The work, published in Nature, challenges the view that organiser-driven axis formation arose only in later animal groups and suggests the developmental toolkit was already present hundreds of millions of years ago.
This ancient 'architect' tissue can build a body in another species. Could this be the key to regenerating human organs?
If a 700-million-year-old body plan 'master switch' exists, what really triggered the explosion of animal life in the Cambrian?
700-Million-Year-Old Organizer Mechanism Found: Landmark Discovery Redraws Animal Evolutionary Tree
Overview
In 2026, researchers from Friedrich Schiller University Jena made a groundbreaking discovery published in Nature, revealing that the essential 'organizer' mechanism—first identified in amphibian embryos by Spemann and Mangold—is much older and more deeply conserved across animal species than previously thought. Their innovative transplantation experiments in comb jellies, one of the earliest animal lineages, provided compelling evidence that this crucial developmental mechanism has been a conserved feature for hundreds of millions of years. This finding marks a major milestone in understanding how animal complexity and body plans originated and evolved.