Prashant Sharma

Whitman Fellow Designs Genomic Tools to Study Horseshoe Crab Eye Development | Marine Biological Laboratory They may be famous for their striking blue blood, but horseshoe crabs have an award-winning vision system.   In the 1930s, Haldan Keffer Hartline produced the first single-cell recording of a photorec...

Lab alum and Harvard postdoc Guilherme Gainett delivers the first gene edited horseshoe crabs!!

www.mbl.edu/news/whitman...

What the sea spider genome reveals about their bizarre anatomy The first high-quality pycnogonid genome provides novel insights in chelicerate evo-devo

medienportal.univie.ac.at/en/media/rec...

The genome of a sea spider corroborates a shared Hox cluster motif in arthropods with a reduced posterior tagma - BMC Biology Background Chelicerate evolution is contentiously debated, with recent studies challenging traditional phylogenetic hypotheses and scenarios of major evolutionary events, like terrestrialization. Sea ...

The lab is proud to have contributed to the first chromosome-level sea spider genome! Many thanks to Niko Papadopoulos, Georg Brenneis, and Andi Wanninger, who spearheaded the work! #pycnogonida

bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

It’s an honor to have taught the arthropod module at Woods Hole Embryology! I started my daddy-long legs system at Woods Hole as a student when I took the course 16 years ago. What fun to be invited back to teach students to inject spiders and arachnid embryos! Added bonus: Gui Gainett and Limulus!

Exploring genome architecture as a source of phylogenetic characters for resolving the apulmonate arachnid polytomy Chromosome-level genome assemblies are powerful tools for identifying the presence of rare genomic changes that can overcome phylogenetically intracta…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The lab is delighted to release the first comparative analysis of the arachnid orders Opiliones and Solifugae, using chromosome-level genomes! We look at macrosynteny as a phylogenetic character for resolving chelicerate phylogeny.

Evolution and homology of leg segments in Chelicerata: Evo-devo solutions to century-old challenges A major theme in the evolution of Arthropoda is the origin and diversification of jointed appendages. One appealing framework for the evolution of art…

A new review paper from the lab—fun times with sea spider and daddy-long legs embryos!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Excited to share our recent review on extraembryonic mesoderm development, just published in Development!

"Extra embryonic mesoderm during development and in in vitro models."

journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

Development and patterning of a highly versatile visual system in spiders | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Visual systems provide a key interface between organisms and their surroundings, and have evolved in many forms to perform diverse functions across the animal kingdom. Spiders exhibit a range of visual abilities and ecologies, the diversity of which is ...

📢New paper in @royalsociety.org Proceedings B!📢

We tracked #eye #development in seven spider species with wildly different visual systems to try and identify the mechanisms underlying their diversity 👀👀👀👀
1/n
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
(Funded by @leverhulme.bsky.social)

“Just because something's important, doesn't mean it's not very small.” —Frank the Pug, 1997

Microtubules still doing their thing in an early ascidian embryo (Phallusia). Thanks to the Ascidian BioCell Team

Friday is Phalangium day!

marine embryo (ascidian/Phallusia) making a gut (gastrulation)...thanks to the Ascidian BioCell Team. Cell contours are blue, microtubules that separate the chromosomes are magenta

Interested in rare genomic changes and arachnid phylogeny? Check out our preprint here! We’re taking a look at the architecture of Solifugae and Opiliones genomes.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The lab was delighted to host Professor Eileen Hebets, the John T. Emlen lecturer this year! For more on her fantastic work on spider songs and dances, please visit hebetslab.unl.edu.

A chromosome-level genome of the giant vinegaroon Mastigoproctus giganteus exhibits the signature of pre-Silurian whole genome duplication Abstract. Within the arachnids, chromosome-level genome assemblies have greatly accelerated the understanding of gene family evolution and developmental ge

The lab is delighted to release the first genome for the giant American vinegaroon! The slowly-evolving order Uropygi captures the strongest signature yet of the arachnopulmonate whole genome duplication. #biodiversity #genomics

academic.oup.com/jhered/advan...

If you’re ever feeling down, Anoplodactylus has your back.

Very excited about the publication of this review with my dear friend and colleague, Efrat Gavish-Regev!

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

A scorpion embryo to brighten your day.

Purple: Pax2A. Yellow: Pax2B. Blue: nuclei.

I’m mesmerized by Japanese sea nettles.

Please add? I work on arachnid phylogenomics and comparative development!

Olfaction with legs—Spiders use wall-pore sensilla for pheromone detection | PNAS The sense of smell is a central sensory modality of most terrestrial species. However, our knowledge of olfaction is based on vertebrates and insec...

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Olfaction in spiders. We found that the wall pore sensilla in spiders look similar from the outside to those of insects, but differ ultrastructurally in various ways. Independent evolution!
🧪

Let's take a look #UnderTheScope! 👀 🔬 This is an adult Nematostella where stinging cells are labeled with eGFP (green). The Gibson Lab studies these to understand #evolution. (@gelatinoussting.bsky.social) #EvoDevo #CellBiology