Ancestral Genomes Trace the Evolution of Nerves.

“Sponges have one of the most ancient lineages and don't have nerve cells,” says Bernie Degnan, of the University of Queensland's School of Integrative Biology. “So we are pretty confident it was after the sponges split from trunk of the tree of life and sponges went one way and animals developed from the other, that nerves started to form.

“What we found in sponges though were the building blocks for nerves, something we never expected to find.” Degnan said the science involved came from the relatively new area of paleogenomics, which is the study of ancestral genomes to provide a more accurate model of animal evolution.

“What we have done is try to find the molecular building blocks of nerves, or what may be called the nerve's ancestor the proto-neuron,” he said. “We found sets of these genes in sponges, when we really didn't expect it.

“But what was really cool is we took some of these genes and expressed them in frog and flies and the sponge gene became functional – the sponge gene directed the formation of nerves in these more complex animals.

The research was published recently in the scientific journal Current Biology and stems from work done by Professor Degnan's lab in mapping the entire genome of the sea sponge Amphimedon queenslandica.

Posted by Jason McManus.

Sources:

http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=15708
http://www.livescience.com/health/080828-nerve-origin.html

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