Coral reveals ancient origins of human genes

Nature Magazine ^ | 16 December 2003 | CARINA DENNIS

[PatrickHenry]

The footnotes are found at the end of the original article. Underlining is not found in the original article (it's the work of your humble poster).

Why post this article? It's presumably evidence of genes skipping over intermediate species. Very curious stuff.

[PatrickHenry]

PING. [This ping list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.]

[samtheman]

Flies and worms and other bugs do share a lot of genes involving the basic biochemistry of life. It's just that some of the morphology stuff got "dropped".

[RadioAstronomer]

Thanks for the ping. :-) Interesting.

[Right Wing Professor]

Why post this article? It's presumably evidence of genes skipping over intermediate species. Very curious stuff

No, it isn't evidence of that. Drosophila and Caenorhabditis are not our ancestors, and they're not intermediate species, they're way off on other branches of our family tree, branches that are likely at least 600 my long.

The common ancestor of corals and humans had the gene. That creature would also have been an ancestor of nematodes and arthropods. The gene was lost early in the lineage of nematodes and of arthropods, but retained in the primitive chordates. It's not the first example of this.

[Ff--150]

My great-great-great-great-great-great--etc.-etc. grampaw--Mr. Coral. No wonder I'm so abrasive???

[thinktwice]

"The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

Happy Thoughts by Robert Louis Stevenson

[Doctor Stochastic]

You could have entitled an article about coral Reefer Madness.

[PatrickHenry]

The gene was lost early in the lineage of nematodes and of arthropods, but retained in the primitive chordates. It's not the first example of this.

Oh. I was worried for a minute there that I might not be related to pond scum. It's comforting to know that my pedigree is intact.

[Papabear47]

Question.If a particular attribute begins to develop such as feathers on early reptiles does the gene responsible for the previous skin mutate or is it replaced by the new gene.

[John H K]

I dimly remember from a class in Oceanography that Tunicates were right on the human ancestral line - have they been sequenced? Should be closer than coral.

[RadioAstronomer]

If a particular attribute begins to develop such as feathers on early reptiles does the gene responsible for the previous skin mutate or is it replaced by the new gene

I have pinged a few folk who could better answer your question. I will still do a bit of research on the answer though. :-)

[LiteKeeper]

YEC SKEPTICAL INTREP

[RussianConservative]

Not intermediate if segment into basic family groups: vertabrets, invertabrets and crustation/exoskeletal creature.

[RussianConservative]

Put me on?

[4CJ]

My great-great-great-great-great-great--etc.-etc. grampaw--Mr. Coral. No wonder I'm so abrasive???

Nah, you're not abrasive. A little opinionated maybe. And maybe a little hard-headed. Well, maybe more than a little. Come to think of it, a whole lot more than a little.

And definately opinionated, I mean, every conversation we have, you have your opinion and never - never - deviate from it. So I'd have to say your're extremely opinionated and hard-headed. And definitely abrasive to boot.

;o)

[PatrickHenry]

Done.

[pabianice]

Bush did it.

[Gorjus]

does the gene responsible for the previous skin mutate or is it replaced by the new gene.

Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: It depends.

Wild Analogy: The gene sequence is like a computer code (okay, so that part is not so wild) but it's designed to run on a limited system. If you want to add a feature, you either need to modify an existing feature or delete it because there's only so much room for code. And so both of your options apply, sometimes both together. As time goes on, like computers, some better models are developed that can run larger and more complex codes. (And some creatures, like coral, don't make many modifications to their code, so they have unused bits hanging around that other creatures have had to replace or modify.)

Final observation: The way in which genes work is a lot more complex than the simple Mendeleev model. (Warning, anlogy switch coming) I think we're going to find that much of what we think of as genes are more analogous to letters than distinct blueprints for physical characteristics. As a whole, the letters form words and sentences, but the specific letters are be used in lots of places. Just because we find one word using that letter doesn't mean we understand the scope of uses for that letter.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!