{"id":772955,"date":"2026-09-16T22:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T22:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/772955\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T22:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T22:24:10","slug":"ctenophores-arent-just-beautiful-theyre-biological-wonders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/772955\/","title":{"rendered":"Ctenophores Aren\u2019t Just Beautiful. They\u2019re Biological Wonders."},"content":{"rendered":"

Around 700 million years ago<\/a>, a group of organisms resembling little more than glowing, gelatinous blobs split off from the rest of the animals, forming possibly the earliest branching animal lineage. Nearly 200 species of ctenophores, commonly known as comb jellies (but unrelated to jellyfish), live today in environments ranging from the cold depths of the sea to warm coastal surface waters. Their magic isn\u2019t just in their persistence or iridescence; it\u2019s in their DNA.<\/p>\n

Over the past decade, ctenophores have helped answer long-standing questions about fundamental biology, from how early nervous systems evolved<\/a> to the origins of the mesmerizing phenomenon of bioluminescence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Having access to closely related species across such variable environments \u201clets you ask questions about how certain things evolved,\u201d such as adaptation to high pressure or light-sensing genes, said Steven Haddock<\/a>, a marine biologist who studies ctenophores at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one of the reasons why we work with ctenophores,\u201d said Pawel Burkhardt<\/a>, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bergen who studies the origins and evolution of neurons and nervous systems. \u201cThey\u2019re very exciting to work with, and they\u2019re also extremely beautiful organisms.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more than a century, scientists thought that sponges, or porifera, were the first to branch off \u2014 the sister group to all other animals. But over the past two decades, evidence has emerged that ctenophores were earlier. In 2023 \u2014 after years of a \u201cping-pong game\u201d between labs debating which group came first, Burkhardt said \u2014 a landmark paper<\/a> analyzing chromosome organization found that ctenophores, not sponges, are the sister group, though this is yet to be fully settled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Around 700 million years ago, a group of organisms resembling little more than glowing, gelatinous blobs split off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-772955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}