School of Veterinary Research Team Published in Prestigious Anatomy Journal
A team of researchers consisting of a final year MVB student Ms. Laura Keogh, Dr. David Kilroy and Dr. Sourav Bhattacharjee, have recently published an article in the prestigious journal Annals of Anatomy titled, “The struggle to equilibrate outer and inner milieus: Renal evolution revisited.” Annals of Anatomy is the official journal of the German Anatomical Society (Anatomische Gesellschaft), and with an impact factor of 2.388, is ranked within the top five journals in the field of anatomy and morphology.
Commenting on the project Laura Keogh said “I began this research project with Dr. Sourav Bhattacharjee and Dr. David Kilroy during my first year of the MVB program. After completing the abdomen and pelvis anatomy module, I found that I was interested in comparative renal anatomy and the possible reasons for species variation. This is what initially motivated me to approach Dr. Bhattacharjee, to get an insight into the work he was doing on that topic.”
She also added “Since those first meetings in the summer of 2017, I have learnt a lot under the mentorship of both Dr. Bhattacharjee and Dr. Kilroy, not only on the topic of renal evolution but also about academia and research and I am very grateful to them for giving me this opportunity. It has been a long road and I am both delighted and honoured that we have come to be published in the Annals of Anatomy.
For their paper the research team retraced the history of renal evolution while using the cult classic, “From Fish to Philosopher; the story of our internal environment,” by the famous American physiologist Prof. Homer W. Smith (1895–1962) as a scholarly template. In doing so, the account describes their journey through the realms of renal evolution, which is an incredible tale of various life-forms trying to adapt toward a continuously altering climate with fluctuations of food, ecosystem, and most importantly, trying to strike an electrolyte balance between its outer and inner milieus.
The article’s scope extends beyond anatomy and intrudes into the history of earth as a planet, its geological vicissitudes, and the mass extinction events that influenced the diverse speciation we see today. It dissects the various theories of the protovertebrate origin and provides a balanced understanding of the various arguments that are put forward by evolutionary biologists in support of different schools of thought. The account presents a comprehensive understanding of renal comparative anatomy with a critique on how growing scientific knowledge, including genetic information, has influenced the current understanding of renal evolution almost after seven decades from when Prof. Smith wrote this amazing treatise.
It is an open-access article that can be viewed (opens in a new window)here.
Congratulations to the team of researchers on this great achievement.