There has been a battle going on between two of Earth ’s most ancient fishes ( or at least so we thought ) as to which it is we have to blame for our antecedent ' leap to landed estate , which set us on a way towards renting , work , and alarm clocks . It was once thought the “ life fossil ” coelacanth was the polar missing link between Pisces the Fishes and tetrapods – four - limbed mundane animals – but recent enquiry last build that thelungfishis our closest dependable fish relative .
So where does that leave our old palcoelacanth ? It was actually thought to have gone extinct until1938 , when the first - ever living specimen was get off the coast of South Africa . This put our estimation of their extinction a small off , but what ’s 65 million yr between friends ? Since then we ’ve continue to learn more about this " living fossil " whose vintage syllable structure look almost superposable to the fossil phonograph recording , but fresh inquiry release in the journalMolecular Biology and Evolutionhas regain several forward-looking upgrades hiding in their genome .
run by a team of scientists in Toronto the subject sequenced the genome of the African Coelacanth , Latimeria chalumnae , and observe 62 new gene that came about as they encountered other species around 10 million long time ago . These factor are unusual in themselves as it seems they came from jumping gene ( aka selfish gene ) , a parasitical stretch of genetic material whose exclusive goal is to reduplicate themselves . These strange DNA elements can even move between metal money through a cognitive operation known ashorizontal gene transfer . This can happen several times in the evolutionary story of a species , so tracking down just when and via which animals this occurred is n’t easy . While the outgrowth of this DNA in coelacanths does n’t appear to have had much of an shock on their chassis , it ’s revealed the striking effect that wandering transposon deoxyribonucleic acid can have on the cistron of species they move through .
" Our findings provide a rather striking example of this phenomenon of transposons lend to the host genome,“saidTim Hughes , senior field of study author and a prof of molecular genetic science in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research at the University of Toronto . " We do n’t know what these 62 factor are doing , but many of them encode deoxyribonucleic acid binding proteins and in all probability have a role in cistron regulation , where even subtle changes are important in evolution . ”
While an insightful physical structure of research , the study leaves many unanswered questions and obtain the result may prove difficult when take with an animate being that is so rare and unvoiced to find . Still , providing even a glimpse into the genome of one of Earth ’s long - stand up residents is not to be sniffed at , and it certainly clear up the way we talk about this Pisces the Fishes .
" It was surprising to see coelacanths pop out among craniate as have a really tumid bit of these transposon - derived gene because they have an undeserved reputation of being a living dodo , " tell graduate student Isaac Yellan who spearhead the report in astatement . " The coelacanth may have evolve a scrap more slowly , but it is certainly not a fossil . ”
