Evolutionary medicine of emunctory functions of the kidney: an empirical review.

ABSTRACT: Primitive emunctory functions to expel harmful substances from cells and the interstitial space of multicellular organisms evolved over the past billion and a half years into the complex physiology of the metanephric kidney. Integrative biology allows empirical testing of hypotheses of the origins of renal structures from homologous single-celled precursors. Emunctory cell complexes called nephridia evolved in metazoan (cnidarian) ancestors 750 million years ago (mya). The pronephric kidney was a metameric structure that evolved some 700 mya in early bilaterians to excrete waste products through nephridial slits in the body wall from head to tail. The mesonephric kidney evolved 635 mya when pharyngeal slits differentiated into filter-feeding gills and a heart-kidney evolved in later bilate

SUBMITTER: Boaz NT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12409785 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature