Suberites

Suberites is a genus of sea sponges in the family Suberitidae. Sponges, known scientifically as Porifera, are the oldest metazoans and are used to elucidate the basics of multicellular evolution. These living fossils are ideal for studying the principal features of metazoans, such as extracellular matrix interactions, signal-receptor systems, nervous or sensory systems, and primitive immune systems. Thus, sponges are useful tools with which to study early animal evolution. They appeared approximately 580 million years ago, in the Ediacaran.

==Evolutionary significance== As members of the oldest phylum of metazoans, Suberites serve as model organisms to elucidate features of the earliest animals. Suberites and their relatives are used to determine the structure of the first metazoans and have been studied to determine how totipotency has replaced by pluripotency in most higher animals. Among other things, Suberites show that tyrosine-phosphorylation machinery evolved in animals independently from other eukaryotes. Suberites are also used as models to elucidate the evolution of transmembrane receptors and cell-junction proteins. A combination of stem cell and apoptosis factors studies is used as a model for studies of development in higher animals.