"The technical paper explains that the octopus genome reveals "massive expansions in two gene families previously thought to be uniquely enlarged in vertebrates: the protocadherins, which regulate neuronal development, and the C2H2 superfamily of zinc-finger transcription factors."...
There are some peculiar similarities between the cephalopod genome and something else they've seen -- but they aren't the kind of similarities that were predicted by common descent. The technical papers notes that the cephalopod genome bears unexpected resemblance in certain respects to vertebrate genomes -- and since these similarities aren't predicted by common descent, they predictably attribute them to convergent evolution
So cool. If I was a billionaire I would start up an octopus neurodevelopment lab, I'm just really curious!
**add to the other one: What I wonder is if thre isn't some underlying mathematical function that drives "random" genetic mutations to be biased toward something that might be useful. Like this antifreeze protein. I'm coming up with this idea about animals entering new environments that require shifts in gene expression and causes changes in epigenetics that activate greater mutation rates in gametes, but mutations that are targeted at genomic regions where a useful protein might emerge? And that maybe if we dig and do a bunch of evolution experiments with bacteria we would find an unusual pattern of random mutations and a shorter time span than expected by pure randomness to the development of some kind of useful protein product.
It would be interesting to also think about the differences in the amount of intron ("junk") DNA between species and whether this is preserved because of its capacity to produce useful proteins when this adaptation program is engaged.
^literally no basis for this except my imagination, but that would make sense to me as an explanation. Like, maybe the adoption of this "algorithmic" evolution mechanism was some extremely unlikely event that happened billions of years ago and permitted a set of single cellular organisms to adapt and fill diverse niches. TBH though, I think it probably would have already been found if it existed, based on what I understand of the cool high-throughput genomic-evolution work.
Related: Radiolab about mitochondria
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