{"id":206815,"date":"2025-02-20T01:11:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T07:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/trichoplax-placazoa-like-trichoplax-seem-simple-at-first-a-crawling-sheet-of-cells"},"modified":"2025-02-20T01:11:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T07:11:41","slug":"trichoplax-placazoa-like-trichoplax-seem-simple-at-first-a-crawling-sheet-of-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/trichoplax-placazoa-like-trichoplax-seem-simple-at-first-a-crawling-sheet-of-cells","title":{"rendered":"Trichoplax: Placazoa like Trichoplax seem simple at first \u2014 a crawling sheet of cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/trichoplax.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Placazoa like seem simple at first \u2014 a crawling sheet of cells. Yet on closer examination, they show remarkable complexity and startling capabilities!<\/p>\n<p>(<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trichoplax\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trichoplax<\/a>) <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\n<i>adhaerens<\/i><\/b> is one of the four named species in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Phylum\" title=\"Phylum\">phylum<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Placozoa\" title=\"Placozoa\">Placozoa<\/a>. The others are <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hoilungia_hongkongensis\" class=\"\" title=\"Hoilungia hongkongensis\">Hoilungia hongkongensis<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Polyplacotoma_mediterranea\" class=\"\" title=\"Polyplacotoma mediterranea\">Polyplacotoma mediterranea<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cladtertia_collaboinventa\" class=\"\" title=\"Cladtertia collaboinventa\">Cladtertia collaboinventa<\/a>. Placozoa is a basal group of multicellular <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Animal\" title=\"Animal\">animals<\/a>, possible relatives of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cnidaria\" title=\"Cnidaria\">Cnidaria<\/a>.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-2\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trichoplax#cite_note-2\"> [ 2 ]<\/a> <\/sup> are very flat organisms commonly less than 4 mm in diameter,<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-3\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trichoplax#cite_note-3\"> [ 3 ]<\/a> <\/sup> lacking any <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Organ_(anatomy)\" class=\"\" title=\"Organ (anatomy)\">organs<\/a> or internal structures. They have two cellular layers: the top <i>epitheloid<\/i> layer is made of ciliated \u201ccover cells\u201d flattened toward the outside of the organism, and the bottom layer is made up of cylinder cells that possess <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cilium\" title=\"Cilium\">cilia<\/a> used in locomotion, and gland cells that lack cilia.<sup id=\u201d cite_ref-ucb_4-0\u201d class=\u201d reference\u201d><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trichoplax#cite_note-ucb-4\"> [ 4 ]<\/a> <\/sup> Between these layers is the fibre <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Syncytium\" title=\"Syncytium\">syncytium<\/a>, a liquid-filled cavity strutted open by star-like fibres.<\/p>\n<p><i>Trichoplax<\/i> feed by absorbing food particles\u2014mainly <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Microbe\" class=\"\" title=\"Microbe\">microbes <\/a>\u2014with their underside. They generally <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Asexual_reproduction\" title=\"Asexual reproduction\">reproduce asexually<\/a>, by <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cell_division\" title=\"Cell division\">dividing<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Budding\" title=\"Budding\">budding<\/a>, but can also <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sexual_reproduction\" title=\"Sexual reproduction\">reproduce sexually<\/a>. Though has a small genome in comparison to other animals, nearly 87% of its 11,514 predicted protein-coding genes are identifiably similar to known genes in other animals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Placazoa like seem simple at first \u2014 a crawling sheet of cells. Yet on closer examination, they show remarkable complexity and startling capabilities! (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trichoplax) adhaerens is one of the four named species in the phylum Placozoa. The others are Hoilungia hongkongensis, Polyplacotoma mediterranea and Cladtertia collaboinventa. Placozoa is a basal group of multicellular animals, possible [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":636,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1506],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/636"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}