Fig. 1: Cnidaria are probably one of the most ancient phyla of known Metazoa.   Metazoa, or multicellular organisms, are one of the amazing “novelties” in natural history. At some point, single eukaryotic cells begin to be organized in a new, incredibly complex plan: a multicellular organism. It is well known and understood that one of the main tools to realize that innovation, that new expression of life, is cell differentiation. Cells, while sharing the same genome, become different, incredibly different one from the other. Stem cells differentiate and acquire, through amazing and still poorly understood epigenetic trajectories, completely different cellular phenotypes and functions. The miracle of transcription regulation, as we have seen in another recent OP, is at the … Continue reading Mechanosensing and Mechanotransduction: how cells touch their world.