ZooCELL scientific vision

All animals need to sense their environments. The ability to detect light, temperature, chemicals, sound, vibrations and other stimuli depends on an extraordinary range of sensory cell types.
The diversity and relationships between these receptor cells across the animal phyla, how they have been adapted, reused, tweaked and sometimes lost, is little known but is crucial for understanding how animals survive and thrive in diverse environments.
Most sensory cells are characterised by complex shapes and molecular machinery, first discovered by meticulous electron microscopy in the past decades. More recently, this has been complemented by genetic studies of their development and differentiation in various animal models. These two research programmes have, however, largely remained separate, and a unified morphological and molecular understanding of how the diversity of animal sensory cells has evolved is lacking.

Our aim in ZooCELL is to create a comprehensive view of sensory cell type evolution based on the discovery of recurrent patterns of genetic and subcellular structure across a wide range of new animal models. To this end, we will combine single-cell genomics, correlative light and electron microscopy, Artificial Intelligence, and reverse genetics approaches in these species.

ZooCELL will bring together Europe’s world-leading expertise in these disciplines, and thus contribute to building the field of comparative integrative cell biology in animals. While training the next generation of doctoral students in these novel interdisciplinary techniques, we will develop new tools for combined molecular and morphological comparative analyses of cell types. Our interdisciplinary, intersectoral and international training programme will also include dissemination and public outreach, and the comprehensive training provided will enable our graduate students to assume leadership roles in academia, industry and science outreach.