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Cover illustration:Front Cover: Botryllus schlosseri, a colonial tunicate, with extended blind termini of vasculature in the periphery. At least two disparate stem cell lineages (somatic and germ cell lines) circulate in the blood system, affecting life history parameters. Photo by Guy Paz.Back Cover: Paracentrotus lividus four-week-old larvae with fully grown rudiments. Sea urchin juveniles will develop from the echinus rudiment which followed the asymmetrical proliferation of left set-aside cells budding from the primitive intestine of the embryo. Photo by Rosa Bonaventura.Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
PrefaceStem cell biology is a fast developing scientific discipline. Based on solid basic aspects, this emerging cell biology field is associated with highly popular applied features. Growing attention is devoted in recent years toward studies on stem cells biology in model organisms (mainly mammalians) including stem cells differentiation and gene expression in selective vertebrates. These studies, in addition to their inherent interest in the general biological phenomenon of stem cells, are motivated by the rationale that stem cells might serve in fighting against human diseases, or in regenerating damaged organs in humans. While the literature on stem cell from vertebrates is rich and expanding in an exponential rate, investigations on marine organisms' stem cells are very limited and scarce. This is in spite of the results, pointing that marine organisms' stem cells are important in various biological disciplines that involve understanding of mechanisms promoting cell growth and differentiation, in developmental biology aspects such as regeneration and budding processes in marine invertebrates, body maintenance of marine organisms (including those that may live for decades), aging and senescence.It is unfortunate that the research on marine organisms is lagging behind the studies on vertebrates and some invertebrate model organism (like Drosophila melanogater and Caenorhabditis elegans), in spite the discoveries that very potent stem cells exist, even in the most primitive multicellular marine organisms (like sponges and cnidarians). Recent studies further revealed similarities between the biological properties of stem cells in marine organisms and the vertebrates, and confirmed the existence of unique properties associated with stem cells from marine organisms that lead to phenomena such as somatic and germ cell parasitism, or whole body regeneration. These results also showed that marine invertebrates' stem cells are characterized by an ...
