Volvox 2015 meeting review available online

Fig. 1 from Herron 2016. Examples of volvocine species. A: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, B: Gonium pectorale, C: Astrephomene gubernaculiferum, D: Pandorina morum, E: Volvulina compacta, F: Platydorina caudata, G: Yamagishiella unicocca, H: Colemanosphaera charkowiensis, I: Eudorina elegans, J: Pleodorina starrii, K: Volvox barberi, L: Volvox ovalis, M: Volvox gigas, N: Volvox aureus, O: Volvox carteri.

Fig. 1 from Herron 2016. Examples of volvocine species. A: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, B: Gonium pectorale, C: Astrephomene gubernaculiferum, D: Pandorina morum, E: Volvulina compacta, F: Platydorina caudata, G: Yamagishiella unicocca, H: Colemanosphaera charkowiensis, I: Eudorina elegans, J: Pleodorina starrii, K: Volvox barberi, L: Volvox ovalis, M: Volvox gigas, N: Volvox aureus, O: Volvox carteri. A and B by Deborah Shelton.

The meeting review for the Third International Volvox Conference is now available online at Molecular Ecology (doi: 10.1111/mec.13551). The editors warned me ahead of time that the challenge for this paper would be to make it of broad interest to the readership of Molecular Ecology, so there is a lot of background information that will be old news to members of the Volvox community.

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Volvox 2015: development

Replica of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's microscope.

Ray Goldstein‘s working (!) replica of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek’s microscope.

At the start of the Development session, I asked for a show of hands of people who self-identify as developmental biologists. About four went up. That’s not quite fair, since there’s some ambiguity in the question (primarily? exclusively?), but my point was that what all of us who are interested in the evolution of multicellularity study is the evolution of development. In fact, it might fairly be said that the origin of multicellularity is the origin of development.

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The most important time in your life

The New York Times has picked up a recent article in Physical Review Letters by Stephanie Höhn and colleagues (Höhn, S., Honerkamp-Smith, A.R., Haas, P. a., Trong, P.K. and Goldstein, R.E. 2015. Dynamics of a Volvox embryo turning itself inside out. Phys. Rev. Lett., 114: 1–5. doi 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.178101).

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