December 10, 2012
Research in the Extavour Lab finds that a gene that acts as "master regulator" of germ cell development originally evolved to play a role in the nervous system rather than in reproduction. Graduate student Ben Ewen-Campen was the first author of this study that shows that this gene arose much earlier in evolution than previously suspected. Read the original article in Current Biology , a Dispatch in Current Biology, and a news feature in The Harvard Gazette.