DETLEV ARENDT
Detlev Arendt was born in Hamburg, Germany. He
studied Zoology at the University of Freiburg in
Germany, where he also obtained his doctorate in
natural sciences in 1999, on the comparison of animal
development. From 1999-2003 he was postdoctoral
researcher in the laboratory of Joachim Wittbrodt.
Since 2003, his laboratory in the Developmental
Biology Unit at the European Molecular Biology
Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany, has established the
marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii as a molecular
model for evolutionary, developmental and
neurobiological research. Detlev Arendt holds a honorary professorship at the
Centre for Organismal Studies at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He has
been awarded the Kovalevsky medal for extraordinary achievements in
evolutionary developmental biology and comparative zoology, and has been
elected EMBO member in 2015.
Detlev Arendt's major interest is the evolution of animal body plans and of the
nervous system. He has also studied the evolution of photoreceptor cells and in
recent years pioneered the growing field of cell type evolution in animals.
From Nerve Net to Brain: The Rise of the Urbilaterian in Animal Evolution
Early animals were simple epithelial spheres, composed of cells that resembled
their unicellular ancestors. Each cell performed many functions, such as sensing
the environment, capturing and digesting small food, and locomotion via beating
flagella. Animal evolution then involved repeated folding of the sphere – first
into a bi-layered, cup-shaped animal and then into a worm with a bilateral series
of inner pouches. During this process, the various cells lining the outer and inner
surfaces diversified into a multitude of types according to their location. Outer
cells specialized on sensing or protection, inner cells on feeding, and yet other
cells on moving the animal around. Some special cells, however, evolved entirely
new functions: among them the first neuron. New comparative studies based on
single cell sequencing in different animals now allow tracing this fascinating rise
of complexity - from unicellular ancestors to the famous urbilaterian that set out
to conquer the global oceans.
Website:
https://www.embl.de/research/units/dev_biology/arendt/index.html