Maria Antonietta Tosches

Looking forward to speaking at the next TIBBE seminar!

Scientists have mapped the entire connectome of a 3-day-old marine worm larva (Platynereis dumerilii), including over 9,000 cells and 200+ neuronal types. This resource can help us understand how nervous systems evolved and coordinate whole-body movement.
buff.ly/IPxFCHs

We haven't explored this yet, but it is definitely an important question, and the Lamanna dataset would be the natural starting point.

Developmental landscape of shark telencephalon sheds light on the evolution of telencephalic cell types and the ancient origin of Cajal-Retzius cells The emergence of predation and associated complex behaviors in jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes) have been major driving forces in brain evolution. To gain insight into the neuronal complexity of the l...

If you want to learn more about the evolution of this fascinating cell type, make sure to also check out the beautiful study by @idoiaeu.bsky.social‬ on sharks www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... end 🧵

Interestingly, Cajal-Retzius cells are VERY similar at the transcriptomic level to another ancestral cell type, the external tufted cell in the olfactory bulb. This suggests that Cajal-Retzius cells may have evolved in early vertebrates from cells involved in olfactory processing. 🧵 6/7

next, Eli and @giacomogattoni.bsky.social‬ hunted Cajal-Retzius cells in chicken 🐓 and three species of fish 🐟, to show that yes, this is an ancestral cell type in the vertebrate brain. 🧵 5/7

… Eli Gumnit started digging into our new salamander developmental scRNAseq dataset and, long story short, found that 80 cells (out of 127,788 cells) had an unmistakable Cajal-Retzius cell transcriptomic profile! 🧵 4/7

Given that a complex, six-layered cerebral cortex exists only in mammals, were Cajal-Retzius cells a mammalian innovation that transformed cortical development? The answer is: not really… 🧵 3/7

More than 100 years ago, Santiago Ramon y Cajal and Gustaf Retzius independently described intriguing neurons on the surface of the developing cortex. Decades later, Cajal-Retzius cells were found to release Reelin, a signaling molecule critical for the correct development of cortical layering 🧵 2/7

Evolution of Cajal-Retzius Cells in Vertebrates from an Ancient Class of Tp73+ Neurons In the developing cerebral cortex, Cajal Retzius (CR) cells are early-born neurons that orchestrate the development of mammalian-specific cortical features. However, this cell type has not been conclu...

Excited to share our latest work on brain evolution, where we dive into the evolution of Cajal-Retzius cells! If you are interested in cell type evolution and cerebral cortex evo-devo, please read on… www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 1/7

So true!

We’re looking for curious, innovative science leaders at EMBL Heidelberg! 🔬🧬🦠

Join a vibrant, interdisciplinary community where collaboration and innovation are nurtured at all levels.

Take a look at these four open positions 👇

A genetically tractable non-vertebrate system to study complete camera-type eye regeneration Nature Communications - Accorsi et al. show that the apple snail Pomacea canaliculata has eyes similar to humans and can fully regenerate them. They then developed genetic tools to establish these...

Evolution’s eye game is wild, but mollusks take it to another level

CRISPR in apple snails gives us a new model to dissect how nature rebuilds complex organs like the camera-type eyes we humans possess

It turns out Evolution doesn’t just innovate, it rewinds, remixes, & regenerates

rdcu.be/ezw0t

Comparative connectomics of two distantly related nematode species reveals patterns of nervous system evolution Understanding the evolution of the bilaterian brain requires a detailed exploration of the precise nature of cellular and subcellular differences between related species. We undertook an electron micr...

Happy to share our publication - Comparative connectomics of two distantly related nematode species reveals patterns of nervous system evolution www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Congratulations Ish! We are so lucky to have you as a colleague here at Columbia!

Today, the @fwf-at.bsky.social honors Elly Tanaka, IMBA's Scientific Director, with the Wittgenstein Award – the premier research award of Austria - for her groundbreaking discoveries in the field of regenerative biology. Congratulations, Elly!

More on the award: imba.science/43Y93sC

How do brain circuits evolve? We started looking for some answers by using synapse-resolution cross-species comparative connectomics on an entire olfactory circuit 👇

bit.ly/44aVm9E

Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. While we will consider all projects in ecolo...

Get the word out far and wide. New opportunity from the Simons Foundation in the Eco-Evo space.

2026 Simons Graduate Fellowship in Ecology and Evolution Awards, due July 31, 2025, only for incoming PhD students who plan to start their PhDs in Fall 2026.

www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

The axolotl, represented here by the Mexican axolotl Ambystoma mexicanum, has the ability to regenerate its brain. In this 2022 issue, a group of four papers profiles amphibian and reptile brain neurons with single-cell transcriptomics. Analyses lend insight into why the axolotl brain retains regenerative capability that the mammalian brain has lost as well as how structural brain innovations arose during evolution.

The axolotl has the ability to regenerate its brain.

Using single-cell transcriptomics, four Science studies in 2022 revealed evolutionary innovations in reptile and amphibian brains.

Learn more during #AmphibianWeek: scim.ag/3EEKMxZ

A human-specific enhancer fine-tunes radial glia potency and corticogenesis - Nature HARE5, a human accelerated region enhancer, modulates cortical development by influencing neural progenitor cell behaviour, leading to an enlarged neocortex with increased functional independence betw...

Thrilled to share our latest study out in @natureportfolio.nature.com led by the fantastically talented Jing Liu. Our study provides insight into a long standing question in biology: What molecular features make us uniquely human and how do these function? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thibaut Brunet Interview with Thibaut Brunet, who studies the evolutionary origin of animal morphogenesis at the Institut Pasteur.

Check out our latest issue to read a Q&A with @thibautbrunet.bsky.social, who studies the evolutionary origin of animal morphogenesis at the Institut Pasteur. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Regional differences in progenitor metabolism shape brain growth during development Brain-wide birthdate mapping reveals that while hindbrain neurogenesis is transient, forebrain neurogenesis is temporally sustained through spatiotemporal regulation of progenitor mitochondrial functi...

Wonderful work by @nataliabaumann.bsky.social & the @djabaudon.bsky.social team showing how progenitor metabolism regulates region-specific neurogenesis! Glad our group could contribute, thanks to Eleonora Conti & Roberto Sansevrino.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Evolutionary dynamics of FoxQ2 transcription factors across metazoans: A tale of three ancient paralogs FoxQ2 is a highly conserved class of Forkhead-box transcription factors expressed on the anterior side of the body in cnidarians and bilaterians. Despite this conserved expression pattern, recent phyl...

New preprint from my PhD in @amphispacelab.bsky.social is out! 🥳

We investigated the evolution of my favorite gene FoxQ2 across 21 animal phyla, and found three ancient paralogs with a very dynamic history.

More on phylogeny, synteny, and comparative in situs in the 🧵 below!

tinyurl.com/2j96px45

Please mark your calendars and join us next May 20th in the next session of the webinar series "The future of Neuroethology". We will have a line-up of amazing scientists as usual, we will learn about locusts, newts and cichlids!

Happy to see my PhD work in the Fleischmann lab at Brown University @carneyinstitute.bsky.social published in
@natureneuro.bsky.social! -Single-cell genomics of the mouse olfactory cortex reveals contrasts with neocortex and ancestral signatures of cell type evolution nature.com/articles/s41...

Delighted to see our paper finally out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social! Together with Ian MacRae, we developed a new toolbox to study microRNAs and used it to find new mechanisms of Purkinje cell development. Please see the tweetorial from researcher extraordinaire @norjin.bsky.social for details.