Ctenophores Aren’t Just Beautiful. They’re Biological Wonders.

The ribbonlike Cestum veneris , or Venus’ girdle, is one of the largest ctenophore species and grows up to 1.5 meters in length.

带状的 Cestum veneris 或维纳斯带是最大的栉水母物种之一，长度可达 1.5 米。

Alexander Semenov /Aquatilis Expedition

亚历山大·谢苗诺夫 /Aquatilis Expedition

The ribbonlike Cestum veneris, or Venus’ girdle, is one of the largest ctenophore species and grows up to 1.5 meters in length.

带状的 Cestum veneris 或维纳斯带是最大的栉水母物种之一，长度可达 1.5 米。

Alexander Semenov /Aquatilis Expedition

亚历山大·谢苗诺夫 /Aquatilis Expedition

A round 700 million years ago , a group of organisms resembling little more than glowing, gelatinous blobs split off from the rest of the animals, forming possibly the earliest branching animal lineage.

大约七亿年前，一群类似于发光的凝胶状斑点的生物体从其他动物中分离出来，可能形成了最早的分支动物谱系。

Nearly 200 species of ctenophores, commonly known as comb jellies (but unrelated to jellyfish), live today in environments ranging from the cold depths of the sea to warm coastal surface waters.

近 200 种栉水母，通常被称为栉水母（但与水母无关），如今生活在从寒冷的深海到温暖的沿海表层水域的环境中。

Their magic isn’t just in their persistence or iridescence; it’s in their DNA.

他们的魔力不仅仅在于他们的坚持或彩虹色；这是他们的基因。

Over the past decade, ctenophores have helped answer long-standing questions about fundamental biology, from how early nervous systems evolved to the origins of the mesmerizing phenomenon of bioluminescence .

在过去的十年中，栉水母帮助回答了有关基础生物学的长期存在的问题，从早期神经系统如何进化到令人着迷的生物发光现象的起源。

Having access to closely related species across such variable environments “lets you ask questions about how certain things evolved,” such as adaptation to high pressure or light-sensing genes, said Steven Haddock , a marine biologist who studies ctenophores at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

蒙特利湾水族馆研究所研究栉水母的海洋生物学家史蒂文·哈多克（Steven Haddock）表示，在如此多变的环境中接触密切相关的物种“可以让你提出某些事物如何进化的问题”，例如对高压或光敏基因的适应。

“That’s one of the reasons why we work with ctenophores,” said Pawel Burkhardt , an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bergen who studies the origins and evolution of neurons and nervous systems.

“这就是我们研究栉水母的原因之一，”卑尔根大学研究神经元和神经系统起源和进化的进化生物学家 Pawel Burkhardt 说。

“They’re very exciting to work with, and they’re also extremely beautiful organisms.”

“与它们合作非常令人兴奋，而且它们也是非常美丽的生物体。”

For more than a century, scientists thought that sponges, or porifera, were the first to branch off — the sister group to all other animals.

一个多世纪以来，科学家们一直认为海绵或多孔动物是第一个分支的动物，是所有其他动物的姐妹类群。

But over the past two decades, evidence has emerged that ctenophores were earlier.

但在过去的二十年里，有证据表明栉水母的出现更​​早。

In 2023 — after years of a “ping-pong game” between labs debating which group came first, Burkhardt said — a landmark paper analyzing chromosome organization found that ctenophores, not sponges, are the sister group, though this is yet to be fully settled.

伯克哈特说，2023 年，经过实验室之间多年“乒乓球比赛”争论哪个群体优先之后，一篇分析染色体组织的具有里程碑意义的论文发现，栉水母而不是海绵是姐妹群体，尽管这一问题尚未完全解决。

How the phylogenetic tree looks under the Ctenophora-sister hypothesis.

栉水母姐妹假说下的系统发育树是怎样的。

Kristina Armitage/ Quanta Magazine

克里斯蒂娜·阿米蒂奇/广达杂志

What makes this all the more surprising is that sponges lack muscles and neurons, while ctenophores have muscles and exhibit evidence of a simple nervous system.

更令人惊讶的是，海绵缺乏肌肉和神经元，而栉水母却有肌肉，并表现出简单神经系统的证据。

“If you think about the earliest branching animal lineage, you would expect less complexity,” Burkhardt said.

伯克哈特说：“如果你考虑最早的动物分支谱系，你会发现它的复杂性会降低。”

“That changes a lot of the assumptions [about] how the very first animal may have looked.”

“这改变了很多关于第一只动物可能长相的假设。”

The more researchers investigate comb jellies, the more complex they appear and the more we learn about the origins of animal life.

研究人员对栉水母的研究越多，它们就显得越复杂，我们对动物生命起源的了解也就越多。

Some species have recently been observed reversing their development from adult to larval stages.

最近观察到一些物种从成虫阶段逆转到幼虫阶段。

Others have special types of lipids that help them withstand extreme pressure in the deep sea .

另一些则具有特殊类型的脂质，可以帮助它们承受深海的极端压力。

They hold clues to the evolution of more and more complex body shapes.

它们掌握着越来越复杂的身体形状进化的线索。

It’s really important to study organisms that might seem strange or weird because they can tell us a lot about the physical, chemical, and biological principles of life, which can then be applied to ourselves, said Itay Budin , a biophysicist who studies cell membranes at the University of California, San Diego.

加州大学圣地亚哥分校研究细胞膜的生物物理学家伊泰·布丁 (Itay Budin) 表示，研究看似奇怪或奇怪的生物体非常重要，因为它们可以告诉我们很多有关生命的物理、化学和生物原理的知识，然后这些原理可以应用到我们自己身上。

“We are as distantly related to a ctenophore as a ctenophore is to a jellyfish.”

“我们与栉水母的关系就像栉水母与水母的关系一样疏远。”

Comb jellies are ancient marine predators whose hairlike extensions known as cilia refract light as they swim, giving them an iridescent shimmer.

栉水母是一种古老的海洋掠食者，它们的毛发状延伸物（称为纤毛）在游泳时会折射光线，使它们散发出彩虹色的光芒。

They are the largest animals known to use cilia for movement, and use sticky cells called colloblasts to catch prey as they move through water.

它们是已知使用纤毛进行运动的最大动物，并在水中移动时使用称为成胶细胞的粘性细胞捕获猎物。

Marine Biological Laboratory Grass Lab

海洋生物实验室 草实验室

Using volume electron microscopy, Burkhardt’s lab identified 17 unique cell types in Mnemiopsis leidyi — 11 of which were previously unknown — in an all-important structure called the aboral organ (center).

Burkhardt 的实验室使用体积电子显微镜，在 Mnemiopsis leidyi 的一个称为腹腔器官（中心）的非常重要的结构中鉴定出了 17 种独特的细胞类型，其中 11 种以前是未知的。

Together, these cells help ctenophores sense light, pressure, and gravity, and the aboral organ is tightly integrated with a continuous network of fused neurons that forms the nervous system.

这些细胞共同帮助栉水母感知光、压力和重力，并且腹腔器官与形成神经系统的融合神经元的连续网络紧密结合。

“Having more neurons condensed at a certain place, that’s one theory [for] how the very first brains evolved,” Burkhardt said.

“更多的神经元聚集在某个地方，这是第一个大脑如何进化的一个理论，”伯克哈特说。

The research was published in March 2026 in Science Advances .

该研究发表于 2026 年 3 月的《科学进展》杂志上。

Alexandre Jan, Michael Sars Centre/University of Bergen

Alexandre Jan，迈克尔·萨斯中心/卑尔根大学

Nervous systems are typically defined as networks of neurons that communicate across synapses.

神经系统通常被定义为通过突触进行通信的神经元网络。

But Burkhardt’s lab found something unique in ctenophores: Beneath the animal’s outer surface is a nerve net (pink mesh in this 3D reconstruction) whose neurons are connected by continuous cytoplasm — but with no synapses between them.

但 Burkhardt 的实验室在栉水母中发现了一些独特的东西：在动物的外表面下方有一个神经网络（3D 重建中的粉红色网格），其神经元通过连续的细胞质连接 - 但它们之间没有突触。

“I don’t think any other animal has a nervous system like that,” Burkhardt said.

“我认为任何其他动物都没有这样的神经系统，”伯克哈特说。

Because ctenophores are one of the earliest branches of the animal family tree, the finding indicates that evolution may have crafted nervous systems twice: in ctenophores, and separately in jellyfish and all other animals.

由于栉水母是动物族谱中最早的分支之一，这一发现表明，进化可能两次创造了神经系统：一次是在栉水母中，一次是在水母和所有其他动物中。

Genome regulation is fundamental to determining when and where genes are turned on and off.

基因组调控对于确定基因何时何地开启和关闭至关重要。

But over long stretches of the genome, this process becomes more complicated, requiring DNA and proteins to physically fold into loops .

但随着基因组的延伸，这个过程变得更加复杂，需要 DNA 和蛋白质物理折叠成环。

Researchers think this was critical to enabling multicellular organisms to develop specialized cells without needing to evolve new genes.

研究人员认为，这对于使多细胞生物能够发育出特化细胞而不需要进化新基因至关重要。

“These are key for cell-type specialization and building complex tissues,” said Arnau Sebé-Pedrós , an evolutionary biologist who studies genome regulation at the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona.

“这些是细胞类型特化和构建复杂组织的关键，”在巴塞罗那基因组调控中心研究基因组调控的进化生物学家 Arnau Sebé-Pedrós 说。

The ctenophore M.

栉水母 M.

leidyi (pictured) has more than 4,000 loops in its genome of just 100 million base pairs (compared to 3 billion in the human genome), which suggests that looped DNA may have evolved 150 million years earlier than scientists thought.

leidyi（如图）的基因组中只有 1 亿个碱基对（相比之下，人类基因组中有 30 亿个碱基对）就有 4,000 多个环，这表明环状 DNA 的进化可能比科学家想象的早 1.5 亿年。

Many species of marine life can produce their own light through bioluminescence.

许多海洋生物物种可以通过生物发光产生自己的光。

As one of the most distant relatives of other glowing multicellular organisms, ctenophores harbor clues in their genomes that point to how and why this evolved.

作为其他发光多细胞生物的最远亲之一，栉水母的基因组中蕴藏着线索，表明其如何以及为何进化。

Haddock’s team found that a few non-glowing ctenophore species lack genes that they suspect help synthesize a light-emitting chemical called coelenterazine.

黑线鳕的研究小组发现，一些不发光的栉水母物种缺乏他们怀疑有助于合成一种名为腔肠素的发光化学物质的基因。

Subsequent research identified the full-length gene in bioluminescent ctenophores.

随后的研究鉴定了生物发光栉水母中的全长基因。

“It’s the most abundant, widespread light-emitting molecule in the ocean,” Haddock said; it appears in copepods, shrimp, squid, mollusks, and more.

“它是海洋中最丰富、分布最广的发光分子，”哈多克说。它出现在桡足类、虾、鱿鱼、软体动物等中。

“It is hard to explain how these things crop up independently across the tree of life,” Haddock said.

“很难解释这些东西是如何在生命之树上独立出现的，”哈多克说。

“They’re maybe co-opting some kind of precursor gene that they [all] have, and then they’re modifying it to use it for a different purpose.”

“他们可能正在选择他们[所有人]都拥有的某种前体基因，然后他们对其进行修改以将其用于不同的目的。”

S.

S。

Haddock/MBARI/The Bioluminescence Web Page

Haddock/MBARI/生物发光网页

When a tank of M.

当M坦克时。

leidyi comb jellies in a lab shrank from 10 adults to nine adults and one larva over the course of a month, scientists cocked their heads in confusion.

实验室里的莱迪栉水母在一个月的时间里从 10 只成虫减少到 9 只成虫和 1 只幼虫，科学家们困惑地歪着头。

In 2024, ctenophores became the third group of animals known to have the Benjamin Button–like ability to reverse its development, joining the ranks of the “immortal jellyfish,” Turritopsis dohrnii , and a tapeworm, Echinococcus granulosus.

2024年，栉水母成为第三类已知具有本杰明·巴顿式逆转发育能力的动物，加入了“不朽水母”灯塔水母和绦虫细粒棘球绦虫的行列。

The reverse development was triggered by prolonged starvation and injury.

这种逆向发展是由长期饥饿和伤害引发的。

“They’re highly plastic, so they can live without food for really long periods,” Burkhardt said.

伯克哈特说：“它们的可塑性很强，因此它们可以在没有食物的情况下生存很长一段时间。”

“They can grow, they can shrink, and that tells you a lot about how the very first animals potentially also had that flexibility.” Joan J.

“它们可以生长，可以收缩，这告诉你很多关于最早的动物如何也可能具有这种灵活性。”琼·J。

Soto-Angel

索托天使

Lipids are cone-shaped molecules that make up all cell membranes.

脂质是构成所有细胞膜的锥形分子。

Unlike most lipids, a special type called the plasmalogen only has one oxygen molecule instead of the usual two.

与大多数脂质不同，一种称为缩醛磷脂的特殊类型仅含有一个氧分子，而不是通常的两个。

Human brains have them, and so do deep-sea comb jellies.

人类的大脑有它们，深海栉水母也有。

They flex in a way that makes it possible for the ctenophores to withstand extreme hydrostatic pressure.

它们的弯曲方式使栉水母能够承受极端的静水压力。

When the ctenophore Bathocyroe aff.

当栉水母Bathocyroe aff。

fosteri was brought to the surface and released from that pressure (left), the plasmalogens expanded (center), cell membranes split apart (right), and the comb jelly disintegrated.

福氏菌被带到表面并从压力中释放（左），缩醛磷脂膨胀（中），细胞膜分裂（右），栉胶解体。

“We went into this asking a very fundamental question about life in the deep sea,” Budin said, “but it involved a biomolecule that’s also very important in our bodies [and] in human health.” Fewer plasmalogens in human brains can be associated with neurogenerative diseases such as dementia, Budin said.

布丁说：“我们提出了一个关于深海生命的非常基本的问题，但它涉及到一种对我们的身体和人类健康也非常重要的生物分子。”布丁说，人脑中缩醛磷脂的减少可能与痴呆等神经生成疾病有关。

These lipids may help cell membranes fuse and break fast enough for neurons to fire.

这些脂质可能有助于细胞膜融合和断裂得足够快，以便神经元放电。

Two of the comb jelly species studied under pressure by Budin and colleagues show the animals’ remarkable variety and complexity.

布丁及其同事在压力下研究的两种栉水母物种显示出这些动物的显着多样性和复杂性。

On the left is the deep-sea lobate comb jelly Bathocyroe aff.

左边是深海叶状栉水母 Bathocyroe aff。

fosteri .

福斯特。

“Bathocyroe” means “master of the deep,” and the species is found at depths ranging from 200 to more than 3,000 meters.

“Bathocyroe”的意思是“深渊的主人”，该物种发现于200米至3000多米的深度。

The red pigmentation in the animal’s stomach is thought to block light emitted when it engulfs bioluminescent organisms, so its prey doesn’t give away its location to other predators.

人们认为，这种动物胃里的红色色素可以阻挡它吞噬生物发光生物时发出的光线，这样它的猎物就不会向其他捕食者泄露它的位置。

The shallow-water comb jelly Leucothea pulchra (right) is named after the Greek goddess of sea-foam.

浅水栉水母 Leucothea pulchra（右）以希腊泡沫女神的名字命名。

This species is rarely found deeper than 20 meters.

该物种很少在深度超过 20 米的地方被发现。

The orange knobs are prehensile, sticky, and used for prey capture.

橙色的旋钮可抓握、有粘性，用于捕捉猎物。

During embryonic development, cells arrange themselves into distinct morphologies due to a blastopore: an indentation that ultimately becomes the anus or mouth (central area pointing upward in this image of M.

在胚胎发育过程中，细胞由于胚孔而将自己排列成不同的形态：最终成为肛门或嘴的凹痕（在这张 M. 的图像中向上指向的中心区域）。

leidyi ).

雷迪）。

The same developmental process for embryos in ctenophores is also found in bilaterians, the large group of animals that share our bilateral symmetry.

栉水母胚胎的相同发育过程也存在于两侧对称动物中，这是一大群与我们一样两侧对称的动物。

This indicates that the blastopore organizer — which turns a mere ball of cells into a complex, multicellular embryo — is conserved across species.

这表明胚孔组织者——它将一个单纯的细胞球变成一个复杂的多细胞胚胎——在物种间是保守的。

“Understanding where the organizer came from tells us which parts of our development are ancient and robust, and which are recent inventions,” said Andreas Hejnol , an evolutionary biologist at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany.

德国弗里德里希席勒大学耶拿分校的进化生物学家安德烈亚斯·海诺尔 (Andreas Hejnol) 表示：“了解组织者的来源可以告诉我们，我们的发育过程中哪些部分是古老而强大的，哪些是最近的发明。”

Human embryos use the same signaling pathways that Hejnol and his colleagues found in ctenophores.

人类胚胎使用与 Hejnol 和他的同事在栉水母中发现的相同的信号通路。

C.

C.

veneris uses cilia and muscular undulation to glide through the water column, preying on copepods and different types of larvae.

veneris利用纤毛和肌肉波动在水柱中滑行，捕食桡足类动物和不同类型的幼虫。

The center of its long body houses its “flight control center,” which contains its stomach, major nerve networks, and primary sensory organs.

它长长的身体中央设有“飞行控制中心”，其中包括胃、主要神经网络和主要感觉器官。

It protects its vital organs from harm by curling its long body around itself.

它通过将长长的身体卷曲在自己周围来保护其重要器官免受伤害。

Alexander Semenov /Aquatilis Expedition

亚历山大·谢苗诺夫 /Aquatilis Expedition

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辱骂、亵渎、自我推销、误导、语无伦次或偏离主题的评论将被拒绝。

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版主在正常工作时间（纽约时间）有工作人员，并且只能接受英文评论。