Metazoan body plans combine well-defined primary, secondary, and in many bilaterians, tertiary body axes with structural asymmetries at multiple scales. Despite decades of study, how axis-defining symmetries and system-defining asymmetries co-emerge during both evolution and development remain open questions. Regeneration studies in asexual planaria have demonstrated an array of viable forms with symmetrized and, in some cases, duplicated body axes. We suggest that such forms may point toward an ancestral eumetazoan form with characteristics of both cnidarians and placazoa.
Keywords: BMP pathway; Bioelectricity; Wnt pathway; eumetazoa; nervous system; symmetry breaking; whole-body regeneration.
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.