Did Octopuses Come From Outer Space?

A scientific paper, originally published in March, from peer-reviewed journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology has found its way in this week's news-cycle. The paper, which is co-written by 33 authors including molecular immunologist Edward Steele and astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe, suggests that octopuses could be aliens, adding legitimacy to a belief, which otherwise has been debunked several times in the recent years.

An excerpt from the paper, which makes the bold claim: The genetic divergence of Octopus from its ancestral coleoid sub-class is very great ... Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch color and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene. [...] It is plausible then to suggest they [octopuses] seem to be borrowed from a far distant 'future' in terms of terrestrial evolution, or more realistically from the cosmos at large."Ephrat Livni of Quartz questions the basis of the finding: To make matters even more strange, the paper posits that octopuses could have arrived on Earth in "an already coherent group of functioning genes within (say) cryopreserved and matrix protected fertilized octopus eggs." And these eggs might have "arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago." The authors admit, though, that "such an extraterrestrial origin...of course, runs counter to the prevailing dominant paradigm." Indeed, few in the scientific community would agree that octopuses come from outer space. But the paper is not just about the provenance of cephalopods. Its proposal that octopuses could be extraterrestrials is just a small part of a much more extensive discussion of a theory called "panspermia," which has its roots in the ideas of ancient Greece. Newsweek spoke with Avi Loeb, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, who told the publication that the paper has raised "an interesting but controversial possibility." However, he added, that it offers no "indisputable proof" that the Cambrian explosion is the result of panspermia.

Further reading: Cosmos magazine has outlined some flaws in the assumptions that the authors made in the paper. It has also looked into the background of some of the authors. The magazine also points out that though the paper has made bold claims, it has yet to find support or corroboration from the scientific community. News outlet Live Science has also questioned the findings.

Comments

I don't get it

[quantaman]

How does this get through peer review with 33 co-authors? I didn't even take a University level biology course and I can tell it's BS.

We can look at the DNA and RNA of Octupuses, we can tell we share common ancestors, if Octopuses came from another planet that would be really really obvious.

WTF? Do they think some Aliens abducted some cuttlefish, cloned them, and then dropped them back on the planet in Octopus form before heading on their way?

Re:I don't get it

[Baloroth]

The theory would be that all life on Earth derives somewhat from this extra-terrestrial seeding, and that octopuses are simply a manifestation of the sudden appearance of complex properties previously unobserved which were derived from the seeding. That at least has some plausibility, in that it cannot be easily falsified. Or at least I think that'd be the theory, the linked "paper" is rather long and I'm not going to waste my time reading it thoroughly (although I question any "paper" that has in one section a direct quotation from wikipedia on tardigrades...).

That said, pansperia is a load of crap: it explains nothing about the origin of life (even if life didn't originate on Earth, it had to originate somewhere, can't be turtles all the way down), has little or no scientific motivation (organic molecules are not life), and is (IMO) only really exists at all as a "theory" because it appeals to the sci-fi fan in many scientists.

Re: I don't get it

[Hallux-F-Sinister]

The only stew that can be made from this single oyster worth of evidence is that there is an anomaly in how few of the intervening evolutionary steps fossils we have found, which could be explained in a number of ways, such as, off the top of my head, the species undergoing a good deal of evolution in a region where the fossils are not available to be found because the sea floor underneath that has been subducted and those fossils, as any such as may have existed, have rejoined the mantle of the Earth. Or maybe they are there and we just have not found them yet. Frankly, a breathless THEY CAME FROM SPAAACEEEE.... is a telltale sign of intellectual laziness or dishonesty, and it is getting a tad late for all the April 1 foolishness.

Re:Nope, you got it wrong.

[iNaya]

EVERY LANGUAGE ON EARTH is nothing more than a conglomeration and bastardizations of words from all the other languages around.

FTFY

The Galiio Comparioson

[rknop]

In the linked Cosmos article there is this quote from one of the authors:

The situation is reminiscent to the problem Galileo had with the Catholic priests of his time – most refused to look through his telescope to observe the moons of Jupiter.

Obviously, this doesn't prove anything, but I like to say that "everybody who's wrong thinks he's Galileo". Referring to the Galileo affair is among science crackpoterry something like Godwin's law in Internet discussions

Anything not accepted by the echo chamber is crazy

[Proudrooster]

Once again, anything not immediately accepted by the esteemed academic echo chamber is looked at is being crazy.
It never hurts to re-explore and think different. This reminds of the Rupert Sheldrake's banned TED talk, https://youtu.be/JKHUaNAxsTg
As Sheldrake states, "free inquiry is the very lifeblood of scientific endeavor"

I applaud a person willing to "rethink" what we think we already know.

I think Mark Twain said it best, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble, it is was you know for sure and you're wrong about, that's what gets you in trouble."

I Read the Paper And Looked Up Some Key References

[careysub]

From the linked LiveScience commentary:

Other researchers were not quick to embrace this theory. "There's no question, early biology is fascinating — but I think this, if anything, is counterproductive," Ken Stedman, a virologist and professor of biology at Portland State University, told Live Science. "Many of the claims in this paper are beyond speculative, and not even really looking at the literature."

For example, Stedman said, the octopus genome was mapped in 2015. While it indeed contained many surprises, one relevant finding was that octopus nervous system genes split from the squid's only around 135 million years ago — long after the Cambrian explosion.

Well, this is looks to be a problem for this hypothesis.

So I decided to look into this a bit more so I downloaded the paper (which was in "accepted manuscript form" not as published paper) and look up some of its references. A key one is cited in the paper as (Liscovitch-Brauer et al 2017), for which the actual citation reference does not exist in the manuscript. I did find the paper though: Cell. 2017 Apr 6;169(2):191-202.e11. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.03.025, "Trade-off between Transcriptome Plasticity and Genome Evolution in Cephalopods"

It includes this helpful paragraph (without the Wickramasinghe mumbo-jumbo inserted in the discussion):

Cephalopods are diverse and can be divided into the behaviorally complex coleoids, consisting of squid, cuttlefish, and octopus, and the more primitive nautiloids. In this paper we show that in neural transcriptomes extensive A-to-I RNA editing is observed in the behaviorally complex coleoid cephalopods but not in nautilus. The edited transcripts are translated into protein isoforms with modified functional properties. By comparing editing across coleoid taxa, we found that, unlike the case for mammals, many sites are highly conserved across the lineage and undergo positive selection, resulting in a sizable slow-down of coleoid genome evolution.

So the cephalopods are quite unusual, with a different approach to evolution starting with the cuttlefish (long before the octopus) with RNA editing taking precedence over DNA modification for evolution. This is very interesting.

The Liscovitch-Brauer paper also helpfully explains:

Cephalopods emerged in the late Cambrian period, roughly at 530 million years ago (mya), and the divergence of nautiloids from coleoides is estimated to have occurred at 350–480 mya. The coleoides diverged to Vampyropoda (octopus lineage) and the Decabrachia (squid and cuttlefish lineage) at 200–350 mya. Divergence of squid from Sepiida is estimated to have occurred at 120–220 mya.

So, a different approach to adapting to evolutionary pressure developed in the coleoides 350–480 mya (i.e. after splitting off from the nautoloids), which is 50-100 million years after the end of the Cambrian, and 60-110 million years after the Cambrian explosion (541 mya), and was in existence by the time that squid and octopus line separated (200-350 mya after the Cambrian explosion).

This is an enormous span of time, and no reason to suppose that alien genes imported at the Cambrian explosion started showing up in coleoides well over 100 million years later. Where were they hiding all that time?

The Wickramasinghe paper cites this anomalous biology of cephaloides, and then jumps to the conclusion "therefore aliens (maybe)".

They got their paper published, but I don't buy it.

Re: NO

[thomst]

The real question is, "Did Slashdot's editors come from the Weekly World News ... ?"

Fascinating!

[BlueStrat]

Seconded. Chandra Wickramasinghe is a one-trick pony whose answer to absolutely everything is panspermia. (life from space)

Bravo for engaging in honest skepticism of the claims.

And yet, many people here calling out this study will not use the same level of skepticism about AGW claims of impending disaster if we don't engage in massive upheavals in society, technology, industry, and standards of living across the board that *just happen* to fit certain political agendas so perfectly that one might suspect shenanigans.

Fascinating, indeed.

Strat