Larval body patterning and apical organs are conserved in animal evolution.

Note that all of these factors are also expressed elsewhere; for example, in Platynereis , foxj is expressed in other six3+ ciliated apical plate cells and, more generally, in ciliary bands; nkx3 is expressed in other apical plate cells (our data) and in segmented mesoderm [ 94 ] and hox1 is expressed in the second larval segment [ 95 ] - nevertheless, the recurrent appearance of these factors in the apical organ region across neuralians appears highly significant and we propose that it reflects the evolutionary conservation of apical organ cell types (see below).

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