Octopus Genome Sequenced

An anonymous reader writes: A large, international team of researchers has completed the full sequencing of the octopus genome. "The researchers discovered striking differences between the genomes of the octopus and other invertebrates, including widespread rearrangements of genes and a dramatic expansion of a family of genes involved in neuronal development that was once thought to be unique to vertebrates." Among other things, the data allows scientists to more deeply analyze the creature's unique nervous system. "The central brain surrounds the esophagus, which is typical of invertebrates, but it also has groups of neurons in the arms that can work relatively autonomously, plus huge optic lobes involved in vision." Their study has been published in Nature.

Comments

Re:Prime example of why intelligence is rare

[The Real Dr John]

The strangest thing is how the research shows that convergent evolution works even with distantly related organisms. The octopus eye is an exact copy of our camera type eye, but it evolved in mollusks (including clams) completely independently from birds and mammals. The only major difference is that mammal's and bird's eyes have the retina "inverted" with the rod and cone receptors at the back of the retina, furthest from the light source. In octopi, the retina is what you would expect, with the photo-receptors in the outer layer of the retina where the light hits first. Now we find out that many neural development genes are similar to mammals, even though they must have gotten to the same evolutionary conclusion via their own route. It makes you think that genes have limited ways to evolve that will actually work in practice, so only those organisms that come up with the correct genetic solutions to a problem do really well.