Meet the Jury Luis Yañez-Guerra on Tracing the Origins of Neurochemical Signalling

Arenberg Doctoral School is proud to invite you to Meet The Jury!

When internationally renowned experts visit KU Leuven as a member of a PhD Examination Committee, we like to seize this opportunity to give this expert a forum to a large audience. All members of Science, Engineering & Technology are most welcome to the Meet The Jury Lectures.

Dr. Luis Yañez-Guerra (University of Southampton, UK) will give a lecture on “Tracing the Origins of Neurochemical Signalling”.

Nervous systems coordinate physiology and behaviour through diverse chemical signalling molecules, including neuropeptides and monoamines. However, many of these signalling systems originated before the diversification of bilaterian nervous systems, and their ancestral functions remain poorly understood. Non-bilaterian animals provide an important comparative framework for reconstructing this early history. Among them, placozoans are particularly informative because they lack synaptically connected neurons while retaining diverse secretory cell types, neuropeptides, monoamines and large repertoires of signalling receptors. Using receptor deorphanisation, phylogenetics, single-cell transcriptomics, metabolomics, expression analyses and behavioural assays, we have characterised several chemical signalling systems in placozoans. Large-scale GPCR deorphanisation has revealed an extensive repertoire of peptidergic pathways that form a multilayer system of chemical communication. Individual neuropeptides can induce striking and long-lasting behavioural responses, including oscillatory changes in body shape, illustrating how coordinated behaviour can emerge from chemical signalling in the absence of conventional synaptic transmission. We have also identified placozoan GPCRs activated by the monoamines tyramine, tryptamine and phenethylamine, demonstrated the endogenous presence of these compounds, and shown that their application produces reversible changes in locomotion and body shape. Phylogenetic analyses further reveal evolutionary relationships between placozoan monoamine receptors and bilaterian monoaminergic receptor families, supporting an ancient origin for core components of monoaminergic signalling. Comparative work in other non-bilaterian animals, including the cnidarian Nematostella vectensis, further shows how receptor deorphanisation and functional pharmacology can be used to reconstruct the evolution and diversification of ancient signalling systems across early animal lineages. Together, these studies suggest that many molecular components now associated with nervous-system communication evolved within more ancient systems of intercellular chemical signalling. Comparative analyses of placozoans and other non-bilaterian animals therefore provide a route to understanding how ancestral signalling networks were progressively incorporated into the nervous systems of early animals.

Following the lecture, there will be opportunity for young researchers to interact with him.

• Venue: Leuven BioScience Centre, Celestijnenlaan 200R, 3001 Heverlee
• Date: 4 November 2026 – 16:00-17:00
• Dr. Luis Yañez-Guerra is visiting KU Leuven on the occasion of the PhD defence of Nathan De Fruyt