Leonid L. Moroz, Richard Collins, and Gustav Pauley
3. Brief History of Placozoa
Daria Y. Romanova and Leonid L. Moroz
4. Stable Laboratory Culture System for the Ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi
Joan J. Soto-Angel, Eva-Lena Nordmann, Daniela Sturm, Maria Sachkova, Kevin Pang, and Pawel Burkhardt
5. Illustrated Neuroanatomy of Ctenophores: Immunohistochemistry
Tigran P. Norekian and Leonid L. Moroz
6. Scanning Electron Microscopy of Ctenophores: Illustrative Atlas
Tigran P. Norekian and Leonid L. Moroz
7. DNA Isolation Long-Read Genomic Sequencing in Ctenophores
David Moraga Amador, Andrea B. Kohn, Yelena Bobkova, Nedka G. Panayotova, and Leonid L. Moroz
8. RNA Isolation from Ctenophores
Andrea B. Kohn, Yelena Bobkova, and Leonid L. Moroz
9. Gene Expression Patterns in the Ctenophore Pleurobrachia bachei: In Situ Hybridization
Andrea B. Kohn, Yelena Bobkova, and Leonid L. Moroz
10. Characterization of the Mitochondrial Proteome in the Ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi Using MitoPredictor
Viraj Muthye and Dennis V. Lavrov
11. Expression and Functional Analysis of Ctenophore Glutamate Receptor Genes
Mark L. Mayer
12. Expression, Purification, and Determination of Sensitivity to Calcium Ions of Ctenophore Photoproteins
Lyudmila P. Burakova, Svetlana V. Markova, Natalia P. Malikova, and Eugene S. Vysotski
13. Functional Screening of cDNA Expression Library for Novel Ctenophore Photoproteins
Svetlana V. Markova and Eugene S. Vysotski
14. Recording Cilia Activity in Ctenophores
Tigran P. Norekian and Leonid L. Moroz
15. Electrophysiology of Ctenophore Smooth Muscle
Robert W. Meech, André Bilbaut, and Mari-Luz Hernandez-Nicaise
16. Gap Junctions in Ctenophora
Andrea B. Kohn and Leonid L. Moroz
17. Analysis and Visualization of Single-Cell Sequencing Data with Scanpy and MetaCell: A Tutorial
Yanjun Li, Chaoyue Sun, Daria Y. Romanova, Dapeng O. Wu, Ruogu Fang, and Leonid L. Moroz
18. DNA Methylation in Ctenophores
Emily C. Dabe, Andrea B. Kohn, and Leonid L. Moroz
19. Ocean to Tree: Leveraging Single-Molecule RNA-Seq to Repair Genome Gene Models and Improve Phylogenomic Analysis of Gene and Species Evolution
Jan Hsiao, Lola Chenxi Deng, Leonid L. Moroz, Sreekanth H. Chalasani, and Eric Edsinger
20. Parallel Evolution of Transcription Factors in Basal Metazoans
Krishanu Mukherjee and Leonid L. Moroz
21. Long-Term Culturing of Placozoans (Trichoplax and Hoilungia)
Daria Y. Romanova, Frédérique Varoqueaux, Michael Eitel, Masa-aki Yoshida, Mikhail A. Nikitin, and Leonid L. Moroz
22. Bioinformatic Prohormone Discovery in Basal Metazoans: Insights from Trichoplax
Mikhail A. Nikitin, Daria Y. Romanova, and Leonid L. Moroz
This volume explores emerging approaches and methods inspired by recent research using ctenophores or placozoans, facilitating the study of these enigmatic species and ancient animal lineages. Practical protocols are integrated with introductory chapters about general biology, summarizing the diversity, evolution, genomics, development, and neurobiology of these organisms. Special chapters outline strategies and applications for culturing, microscopy, physiology, electrical synapses, and bioluminescence, molecular and single-cell biology, transcription factors, as well as gene and protein expression analyses. The book also contains bioinformatics and computational chapters covering peptidomics and epigenomics. Written for the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series, chapters include detailed implementation advice that leads to dependable results in the laboratory.
Authoritative and practical, Ctenophores: Methods and Protocols is an ideal resource for comparative and experimental biologists and interdisciplinary scientists aiming to decipher fundamental principles of animal organization, origin, and the evolution of biological complexity in general, opening novel avenues for future synthetic biology research.