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Humans and squid evolved same eyes using same genes
Eyes and wings are among the most stunning innovations evolution has created. Remarkably these features have evolved multiple times in different lineages of animals. For instance, the avian ancestors of birds and the mammalian ancestors of bats both evolved wings independently, in an example of convergent evolution. The same happened for the eyes of squid and humans. Exactly how such convergent evolution arises is not always clear.
In a new study, published in Nature Scientific Reports, researchers have found that, despite belonging to completely different lineages, humans and squid evolved through tweaks to the same gene.
Eyes are the prize
Like all organs, the eye is the product of many genes working together. The majority of those genes provide information about how to make part of the eye. For example, one gene provides information to construct a light-sensitive pigment. Another gene provides information to make a lens.
Most of the genes involved in making the eye read like a parts list – this gene makes this, and that gene makes that. But some genes orchestrate the construction of the eye. Rather than providing instructions to make an eye part, these genes provide information about where and when parts need to be constructed and assembled. In keeping with their role in controlling the process of eye formation, these genes are called “master control genes”.
The most important of master control genes implicated in making eyes is called Pax6. The ancestral Pax6 gene probably orchestrated the formation of a very simple eye – merely a collection of light-sensing cells working together to inform a primitive organism of when it was out in the open versus in the dark, or in the shade.
Today the legacy of that early Pax6 gene lives on in an incredible diversity of organisms, from birds and bees, to shellfish and whales, from squid to you and me. This means the Pax6 gene predates the evolutionary diversification of these lineages – during the Cambrian period, some 500m years ago.
The Pax6 gene now directs the formation of an amazing diversity of eye types. Beyond the simple eye, it is responsible for insects’ compound eye, which uses a group of many light-sensing parts to construct a full image. It is also responsible for the type of eye we share with our vertebrate kin: camera eye, an enclosed structure with its iris and lens, liquid interior, and image-sensing retina.
More here: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/09/humans-and-squid-evolved-same-eyes-using-same-genes/
4 replies
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We focus our eyes by pulling on the lens to change its shape. A squid moves the lens closer to, or further away from, the retina.
The intelligent designer was having a bad day when he got to our retinae. He put the nerves and blood vessels out in front of the photoreceptors. How dumb was that? He did a better job for squids and octopi, which have their photoreceptors out in front.
