Andreas Hejnol

Clonal-aggregative multicellularity tuned by salinity in a choanoflagellate - Nature The choanoflagellate Choanoeca flexa forms motile and contractile cell monolayers purely clonally, purely aggregatively or through a combination of both processes depending on environmental conditions.

A study in Nature shows that the single-celled form of a tiny, aquatic organism can turn into a multicellular version by three different routes. The discovery adds insight to the possible origins of multicellular life, suggesting a previously unrecognized degree of flexibility. 🧪

👩‍🔬 International Day of Women and Girls in Science👩‍🔬
Today we celebrate the incredible women driving the ZooCELL research forward.
A special shout-out to our doctoral candidates, Asli, Kata, Lucia, Marie, Maria, Nina, Olga, Shreya and Vishnupriya, and to our inspiring PIs Anna, Ina, Liz […]

A Cambrian soft-bodied biota after the first Phanerozoic mass extinction - Nature The Huayuan biota exhibits extraordinary biodiversity, illuminating the impact of the Phanerozoic mass extinction around 513 million years ago and offering critical insights into the transformation of...

A new-found Cambrian soft-bodied biota immediately after the Sinsk Event, the first mass-extinction crisis of the Phanerozoic - paper in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Absence of conserved immune signalling pathways and increased pathogen susceptibility associated to photosymbiosis in acoels - BMC Biology Background Host immunity plays an important role in coral symbiosis with dinoflagellates. Photosymbiosis (the association between hosts and photosynthetic endosymbionts) has evolved multiple times wit...

First paper of my PhD published 🎉

doi.org/10.1186/s129...

It's about immunity in acoel worms and its link to photosymbiosis. There's evolution and immune gene expression, but also mortality, dysbiosis, and host responses upon pathogen exposure.

With @hejnol.bsky.social and @rimskaya.bsky.social!

Punkt 15 Uhr lief die Palästina-Demo los Richtung Innenstadt, begleitet von Polizei. Am hinteren Demozug wird die Stimmung zunehmend aggressiver, bislang habe ich aber keinerlei Kontakt gesehen.

Auffällig ist die hohe Dichte von rechten und Querfront-Streamern. #le1701

❤️

Our eLetter github.com/caseywdunn/s... responding to a recent Science paper was just posted. The paper found more genes with consistent support for sponge-sister than ctenophore-sister. We found several technical issues that, when corrected, reverse the conclusions and recover ctenophore-sister.

Opinion | Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise

Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/o...

Jahrelange Verschwörungstheorien: Xavier Naidoo feiert in Köln umstrittenes Konzert-Comeback Nach sechs Jahren Pause feiert Xavier Naidoo am Dienstag in Köln sein Konzert-Comeback. Es ist keine Rückkehr wie jede andere.

Wo kann man jahrzehntelang antisemitische Verschwörungsideologien featuren, die Shoah leugnen und eliminatorischen Antisemitismus verbreiten, lange bevor das im Trend war, und sich dennoch vor ausverkauften Hallen feiern lassen, als wäre nichts gewesen? In Deutschland #XavierNaidoo

Wir suchen weiteres Foto- und Videomaterial von dem Vorfall, bei dem ein Auto mit AfD-Teilnehmern hinter einem Krankenwagen durch eine Blockade fährt und Menschen verletzt. Das Material kann uns auch vertrauensvoll und verschlüsselt zugeschickt werden. #Gießen #Giessen

The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins and their changing roles in different organisms across evolution Nature Reviews Neuroscience - Recent studies have shed further light on the evolutionary origins of chemical synapses, In this Review, Colgren and Burkhardt explore how ancient proteins were...

First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience

Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com
Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E

@jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

Evolutionary biologist Prof. Dr Andreas Hejnol looks at panther worms (Hofstenia miamia) in a petri dish. Image: Nicole Nerger / Uni Jena

"Panther worms" (Hofstenia miamia) in a petri dish. The worms, which have existed for 550 million years, are among the first "Bilateria", symmetrically structured animals with a left and a right half of the body, just like mammals. Image: Nicole Nerger (/ Uni Jena

How did the anus evolve? Researchers led by evolutionary biologist Prof. Dr Andreas Hejnol from #UniJena, in collaboration with the University of Bergen, showed that in sea worms (Xenacoelomorpha), the sperm duct exhibits the same gene pattern as the later rectum.

➡️ www.uni-jena.de/en/367301/th...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFB4...

Left 😊

Die Grafik zeigt, dass 93% aller politischen Morde in den USA von 2005 -2025 von Rechtsextremen verübt wurden.

Ich habe mir kurz die Mühe gemacht die jüngere Geschichte der politischen Morde in den USA anzuschauen. Zwischen 2005 und 2025 gab es 371 solcher Morde. 93% davon wurden von Tätern mit einem rechten oder rechtsextremen Motiv verübt. Quelle: Anti Defamation League.

We are all super happy and proud to see our work on the function and evolution of the #cephalic #furrow published in @nature.com. Let me say a few things about the background and history of this work on the #Evolution_of_Morphogenesis (1/12)

Das Bild zeigt die Endstand-Grafik vom Spiel FC St. Pauli gegen Borussia Dortmund. Oben steht in weißer Schrift auf schwarzem Hintergrund „Endstand“, daneben das Levi’s-Logo als Sponsor. Im Hintergrund läuft das Spiel im Millerntor-Stadion, die Tribünen sind voll besetzt. Im Vordergrund ist FCSP-Spieler Danel Sinani (Rückenansicht, Trikotnummer 10) bei einer Ecke zu sehen, der Ball liegt bereits an der Eckfahne.

Punktgewinn am Millerntor: Vasilj hält einen Elfmeter, Hountondji, Sinani und Smith sorgen für unsere ersten Saisontreffer.

#fcsp #fcspbvb

A tale of two vibes.

EvoDevo Papers' improved website and Bluesky support - Bruno C. Vellutini The newest version of EvoDevo Papers is online, and it's the biggest update since the last codebase refactoring. I've made several additions and improvements

📑 EvoDevo Papers is now on Bluesky @evodevo-papers.bsky.social, posting research papers in the field of evolutionary developmental biology (or #EvoDevo).

There's also a new website: evodevo.brunovellutini.com. Read more on brunovellutini.com/posts/evodev...

Prozess gegen Maja T. und weitere Auslieferungen nach Ungarn? Podcast-Folge · Die Justizreporter*innen · 04.07.2025 · 54 Min.

podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/d...

Solidarität ist unsere Stärke, heute in Jena eindrucksvoll demonstriert! ✊🏻❤️‍🔥
#freeMaja
#freeallantifas
#j1406

May 10: Using microbes to solve crimes, and more… | CBC Radio On this week's show: anus origins, deepfake detectors, crows do geometry, magnetars make gold, and territorial caterpillars.

It’s kinda #Ironic that an anus is required for us to have brains and many humans definitely use their anuses as brains.

#HejnolLab #CBCQuirksAndQuarks @hejnol.bsky.social

www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks...

14 Beispiele für völkisches Denken in der AfD Völkisches Denken prägt die AfD. CORRECTIV zeigt mit 14 Zitaten, wie tief rechtsextreme Ideen wie „Remigration“ in der Partei verankert sind.

Wie tief völkisches und rechtsextremes Gedankengut seit Jahren in der #AfD verankert ist, zeigt ein Blick in die Vergangenheit. Das zeigte CORRECTIV bereits mit 14 Zitaten aus den letzten neun Jahren, aus denen sich die völkischen Ideen der AfD im Detail ablesen lassen.

AfD Thüringen: Flinten, Pistolen, Sprengsätze – so bewaffnet sich das Umfeld Wie gefährlich ist die Höcke-AfD? Etliche Personen, die dem Thüringer Landesverband nahestehen, besitzen scharfe Schusswaffen. Die Linke zieht Parallelen zu den Terroristen des »NSU«.

"154 scharfe Schusswaffen sind im Besitz von Personen aus dem Umfeld der Thüringer AfD (87 Langwaffen, 67 Kurzwaffen). Neun Personen aus Höckes als rechtsextrem eingestuften Verband haben zudem eine Erlaubnis zum Umgang mit Sprengstoff."

Was soll da schon passieren 🤡

www.spiegel.de/panorama/afd...

Can confirm that my NSF grant "How False Beliefs Form & How to Correct Them" was cancelled today because it is "not in alignment with current NSF priorities" Shocking that understanding how people are misled by false information is now a forbidden topic. Our work will continue but at a smaller scale

Updates on NSF Priorities

NSF says investigators can no longer propose to expand participation in STEM for women and underrepresented groups, and are terminating awards on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and misinformation/disinformation.

Make science all white and male again!

The anus may have evolved from a hole originally used to release sperm The long-standing question of how animals came to have an anus may have been solved by studies of which genes are active during development in various animals

We may regard it as a humble part of the body, but the evolution of the anus was a major advance in animal evolution, laying down the fundamental bodyplan for most animals 🧪

Now @hejnol.bsky.social and co may have worked out how it came to be

www.newscientist.com/article/2473...

The last chapter of my PhD is finally out! Huge thanks to my supervisor @genikhovich.bsky.social for supporting “at first glance, stupid ideas” — which turned into a nice paper! That was so much fun!

new!

In 2008 Mark and I proposed the idea about the relocation of beta-catenin nuclearization and the endomesoderm induction (doi.org/10.1016/j.de...). Now data by @genikhovich.bsky.social et al shows, that beta catenin does not induce endomesoderm in cnidarians. Progress! www.nature.com/articles/s41...