Intelligent RNAs in the Brain
Excerpt: Alternative RNA splicing and non-coding RNA particles have evolved unusually rapidly. Intelligent RNAs in the brain have fostered rapid human evolution.
Do we have to say “evolved” for everything? The complexity here is intelligent, no matter what you call it, evolved implies with no direction, an mainly by chance, which is an outmoded term for this level of complexity. I get so tired of trying to latch on a dead end theory of chance and necessity, somehow driving things – it is obvious to me, and I think any intellectually honest person, that we are GIVEN what we need to progress and adapt.. Or alternatively our consciousness pushes us forward. And important – when they say CHANCE and necessity, they are talking about winning the lotto, continuously every day, over and over and over. There is no chance.
Xeroxed lung gene helps salamanders breathe through their skin
Excerpt: A copy of a key lung gene shifted where it is active, rendering skin capable of efficient gas exchange, they reported here this week at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. The loss of lungs represents major evolutionary change
Meeting Abstract
75-6 Wednesday, Jan. 6 09:15 Neofunctionalization of a lung-gene paralog may facilitate respiration in lungless salamanders LEWIS, Z.R.*; DORANTES, J.A.; HANKEN, J.; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA zlewis@oeb.harvard.edu http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~zrlewis/
Most terrestrial vertebrates use lungs to breathe. The few exceptions include lungless amphibians (hundreds of species of salamanders, but only two other amphibians), which breathe entirely through the skin and buccal cavity. How lungless amphibians are able to meet metabolic demands is a topic of considerable speculation. Lunglessness places theoretical limits on thermal tolerance and body size, but lungless salamanders paradoxically live across diverse thermal environments and reach relatively large body sizes. Lungless salamanders display a slight increase in vascularization of extrapulmonary tissues (the skin and buccal cavity) compared to some lunged species, but morphological differences alone do not explain observed increased extrapulmonary respiratory capacity. Molecular differences between lungless and lunged species may account for greater extrapulmonary respiratory capacity. We have discovered a novel paralog of a lung-specific gene that likely evolved in salamanders and may serve a unique function in lungless species. This paralog is expressed solely in the lungs in lunged salamanders, resembling the expression pattern of its ancestral gene. However, the expression site of this paralog in a lungless salamander is dramatically divergent: in embryos and larvae of Desmognathus fuscus, the paralog is expressed throughout the skin. At metamorphosis, expression shifts to the buccal cavity. We propose that the salamander-specific paralog is neofunctionalized in lungless salamanders to facilitate cutaneous and buccal respiration. Neofunctionalization of this gene and its dynamic expression pattern may help lungless salamanders adapt to shifting life history-related demands for gas exchange and may help account for the remarkable adaptive radiation of lungless salamanders.
My comment: The presenters reported the nutrient-dependent de novo creation of a gene via energy-dependent hydrogen-atom transfer in DNA base pairs and gene duplication that links the physiology of reproduction to ecological adaptations via fixation of RNA-mediated amino acid substitutions that are required during life history transitions.
We have discovered a novel paralog of a lung-specific gene that likely evolved…
My comment: No experimental evidence of biologically-based cause and effect suggests that any gene has ever evolved.