Scientists at UCSB discover 600 million-year-old origins of vision

University of California - Santa Barbara ^ | Mar 11, 2010 | Unknown

[decimon]

Cnearsighted.

[mountainlion]

I don’t believe them.

[decimon]

I don’t believe them.

Then don't.

[RobRoy]

>>”Instead, it illustrates how all organisms –– humans included –– are a complex mix of ancient and new characteristics.” <<

Is that statement very scientific. It appears to be a statement of fact about something that, at best, is an hypothesis.

[sinatorhellary]

"This work picks up on earlier studies of the hydra in my lab, and continues to challenge the misunderstanding that evolution represents a ladder-like march of progress, with humans at the pinnacle," said Oakley. "Instead, it illustrates how all organisms –– humans included –– are a complex mix of ancient and new characteristics."

Well I'll be a hydra's uncle! Keep telling humans that they're no different from the animals, and in a few generations they'll start to act like it.

[ClearCase_guy]

Can a biologist explain this to me? The Hydra is a genus. Above that you have Family and Order and Class. Then you get to Phylum.

There seems to be an implication here that humans have this gene because cnidaria developed it 600 million years ago. Well, humans are in a different Phylum, so I don’t see how we got anything from the cnidaria. Meanwhile, flies are yet another phylum, and the article indicates that vision among such animals emerged later and separately. Why wouldn’t they say that about humans?

I fail to see why any connection is made between humans and hydra. If the gene is the same it would seem to argue more for an Intelligent Designer who re-used an idea that works rather than for a line of descent from two separate phyla.

[alancarp]

Didn’t most - if not all - life on earth get trashed a mere 65 million years ago from an asteroid hit? Kinda like hitting the Reset button on all of this?

[Moonman62]

I agree. Somehow the Hydra would have to be representative of a common ancestor for this article to make sense.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I know the origins of human sight.

It is sad that so many people are blinded to the truth.

[ClearCase_guy]

Just to expand, if two phyla share a similar characteristic, then I would think that the characteristic would be expected to start before the phyla split. Which moves us up into the Kingdom level (Animalia). But if this gene for vision originates at the top of the animal kingdom, then why don't flies have it?

I'm just an uneducated rube, but I don't see how this hangs together as any sort of orderly descent.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Nature liked this gene so much that she transplanted it to other species.

[raygunfan]

More handwaving and just so stories, couched in ‘scientific’ jargon.....

[ClearCase_guy]

Blind nature, of course, cannot do that. An Intelligent Designer can certainly do that. But what is being described here violates any sort of straight line of descent and therefore is an argument against Evolution.

[a fool in paradise]

By studying the hydra

[paudio]

By studying the hydra, a member of an ancient group of sea creatures that is still flourishing...

Wow... I didn't know that these creatures are still around...

[Gritty-Kitty]

It’s a scam. I once got an e-mail from those Cnidarians promising me riches in exchange for a small processing fee.

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[decimon]

I once got an e-mail from those Cnidarians promising me riches in exchange for a small processing fee.

But you saw right through that.

[count-your-change]

Yippeee Skippeeee!!! More papers to publish, more grants, pushing the edges of the pay envelope back just a bit further in the name of hydra genetics. Let's call it HydraGen!!!