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Octopus, squid and cuttlefish are famous for engaging in complex behavior, from unlocking and escaping from an aquarium tank to instantaneous skin camouflage to hide from predators. A new study suggests their evolutionary path to neural sophistication includes a novel mechanism: Prolific RNA editing at the expense of evolution in their genomic DNA.
Liscovitch-Brauer, et al. (2017) Trade-off between transcriptome plasticity and genome evolution in cephalopods. Cell DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.03.025.
[Ed. Note: The wikipedia page on RNA editing is unclear unless you have some experience with biology. The New York Times does a better job of explaining what it is for the layman.]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @04:54AM
You think RNA is bad, that's the modularised version. The DNA it's refactored from is real spaghetti code.