Polyps are sophisticatedly intelligent creatures, and now scientists have discovered a clue that may partly explain cephalopods’ extraordinary intelligence: Their genes have a genetic quirk that is also found in humans, according to a new study.
The clues discovered by scientists are called “Geniuses that jump” or transposons and constitute 45% of the human genome. Jumping genes are short sequences of DNA with the ability to copy and paste or cut and paste to another location in the genome and have been linked to the evolution of genomes in multiple species.
Genetic sequencing recently revealed that two species of polyps, Octopus vulgaris and Octopus bimaculoides, also have transposon-filled genomes, according to a study published on May 18 in the journal BMC Biology.
Polyps and humans: a common path of evolution
In both humans and polyps, most transposons are dormant, either turned off due to mutations or blocked from replication by cellular defenses, the study authors reported. But a type of transposon in humans, known as Long Interspersed Nuclear Elements or LINE, may still be active.
Evidence from previous studies suggests that LINE jump genes are tightly regulated by the brain, but are still important for learning and memory formation in the hippocampus. When the scientists took a closer look at the jump genes of the polyps that they could freely copy and paste around the genome, they discovered the transposons of the LINE family.
“This element was active in the vertical lobe of the polyps, a section of their brain that is critical to learning and is functionally analogous to the human hippocampus.” Graziano Fiorito, co-author of the study and biologist at the Anton Dohrn zoological station (SZAD) in Naples.
In the new study, the researchers measured the transcription of an octopus transposon into RNA and the translation into proteins and found significant activity in areas of the brain related to behavioral plasticity – how organisms change their behavior in response. to different stimuli.
“We were very happy because this is a kind of test”said study co-author Giovanna Ponte, a researcher at the SZAD Department of Biology and Evolution of Marine Organisms.
Although polyps are not closely related to animals with the backbonehowever, demonstrate a behavioral and neural plasticity similar to that of vertebrates, Fiorito added. “These animals, like mammals, have the ability to continually adapt and solve problems”and this evidence suggests that the similarity may have a genetic origin.
These findings not only link jumping genes to octopus intelligence, but also suggest that LINE transposons do a lot more than just jump around. Rather, they play a role in cognitive processing, the authors suggested in a statement. Because jumping genes are shared by humans and polyps, they could be good candidates for future research into intelligence and how it develops and varies between individuals within a species, according to the study.
However, since polyps are quite distant from humans on the tree of life, it is possible that the LINE transposons active in the two groups are an example of convergent evolution. This means that their contribution to intelligence has evolved separately in the two lineages, rather than originating from a shared ancestor, the scientists reported.
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