A molecular switch between proliferation and differentiation, maintained by anti-cancer selection, imposes a developmental constraint
on ontogenetic rates and morphological evolution.
I joined Dr. Kay Holekamp's lab, which focuses
on the ontogenetic development, physiological substrates, and evolution of mammalian behavior, using the free - living spotted hyena as a model species.
Components of the major metazoan developmental signalling pathways, as well as classes of developmental transcription factors, are mostly present in Amphimedon and absent from Monosiga and other non-metazoan genomes13, 14,16,27,29, suggesting that
ontogenetic development, including primary germ cell formation (Supplementary Note 8.4), originated
on the metazoan stem3, 11,12.