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When Less is More: Gene Loss in Evolution

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday April 05 2018, @09:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-don't-know-what-you've-got-till-it's-gone dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The diversity of animals is one of the most fascinating aspects of nature. All habitats on the planet, be it land, water, or air, are occupied by species with incredible adaptations to their environment. One way to address the question of how this diversity has evolved is by comparing genes across different species. During evolution, genes can be created, get mutated or duplicated, and even can get lost.

To investigate to what extent gene losses can contribute to different adaptations, Michael Hiller and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden developed a computational method to identify gene losses and systematically searched the genomes of 62 mammals to analyze which genes are lost in which species.

Their findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, highlight a number of previously unknown gene losses that may have occurred as a consequence of a previous, existing adaptation, or – and more interesting – that may have played a direct role in the evolution of a new morphological or physiological adaptation.

A genomics approach reveals insights into the importance of gene losses for mammalian adaptations (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03667-1) (DX)

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 06 2018, @12:19AM (2 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday April 06 2018, @12:19AM (#663201) Homepage Journal

    That's the mystery. We've never been able to get him to say. We hypothesize that a fat chick was involved but as yet we have no evidence.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 06 2018, @12:45AM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 06 2018, @12:45AM (#663209) Journal

    That's the mystery. We've never been able to get him to say. We hypothesize that a fat chick was involved but as yet we have no evidence.

    A case of beer goggles causing loss of genes, ey? Not that unusual, I wonder why nobody finances a serious study of the phenomenon?
    I'm sure there are evolutionary effects which may reach non-trivial proportions.
    Something on the line of "Behavioral induced genetic influences in the obesity epidemic"

    (grin)

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