Oliver W. Griffith

TL;DR: The data suggest that implantation in eutherians is derived from an ancestral inflammatory reaction to embryo attachment in the therian ancestor, and the ability to shift from an inflammatory attachment reaction to a noninflammatory period of pregnancy was a key innovation in e Lutherian mammals that allowed an extended period of intimate placentation.

TL;DR: This work argues that acute endometrial inflammation was ancestrally a natural maternal reaction to the attaching blastocyst, and proposes that Eutherian implantation arose through a transformation of the acute inflammation into a process essential for implantation by causing vascular permeability and matrix reorganization.

TL;DR: The authors used transcriptome profiling to examine brood gene expression at successive gestational stages in a syngnathid with the most complex brood pouch morphology, the seahorse Hippocampus abdominalis, using a unique time-calibrated RNA-seq data set including brood pouch at key stages of embryonic development.

TL;DR: It is concluded that the first squamates were oviparous, that frequent transitions to viviparity have occurred, and that reversals to oviparity in vivIParous lineages either have not occurred or are exceedingly rare.

TL;DR: It is shown that a novel cell type of eutherians mammals, the decidual stromal cell (DSC), evolved by rewiring an ancestral cellular stress response, and proposed that rewired of cellular stress responses was an important mechanism for the evolution of the eutherian decidUAL cell type.