The origin of the vertebrate brain

This project will provide novel information on the origin and development of the vertebrate brain by combining anatomy and morphology with whole genome sequencing of selected animals. A theory from 1894 states that the vertebrate spinal cord originated by involution of a set of dorsal ciliary bands found in deuterostome invertebrates and implicates that the vertebrate hindbrain-midbrain boundary is key to understand whether the brain is a new invention or just a "simple" extension of a primitive neural tube. We propose that the vertebrate brain up to the level of the hindbrain-midbrain boundary represents a trait traceable to invertebrate ancestors, and that the midbrain is a new invention in the vertebrate line, originating by a mirror-image duplication of the primitive hindbrain-midbrain boundary as a result of internal shifts in the position of genes present in our invertebrate ancestors followed by chromosome/gene duplications known to have occurred early in the vertebrate history.