Figure 1 from Hanschen et al. 2016. (a) Evolution of cell cycle control (C), expanded ECM (E) and somatic cells (S) are denoted. (b) Micrographs of Chlamydomonas (green; scale bar, 10 μm), Gonium (blue; scale bar, 10 μm) and Volvox (black; scale bar, 25 μm) show morphological differences.

I haven’t read it yet and won’t have time today, but the Gonium pectorale genome paper just came out in Nature Communications! Erik Hanschen is the lead author, and the article is open access. I previously reported on Erik’s talk at Volvox 2015:

The release of a third volvocine genome will be a welcome addition, substantially reducing uncertainty about which features are ancestral to the multicellular species (those shared between Gonium and Volvox) and which are derived in the V. carteri lineage.

Stay tuned; there will definitely be more on this paper next week.

Stable link:

Hanschen, E. R., T. N. Marriage, P. J. Ferris, T. Hamaji, A. Toyoda, A. Fujiyama, R. Neme, H. Noguchi, Y. Minakuchi, M. Suzuki, H. Kawai-Toyooka, D. R. Smith, V. Luria, A. Karger, M. W. Kirschner, H. Sparks, J. Anderson, R. Bakaric, P. M. Durand, R. E. Michod, H. Nozaki, and B. J. S. C. Olson. 2016. The Gonium pectorale genome demostrates co-option of cell cycle regulation during the evolution of multicellularity. Nature Communications 7:11370.