NEW SURPRISES ABOUT OUR BEAUTIFUL EVOLUTION NOW

Humans began to evolve from apes about six million years. But if we trace our lineage back 600 million years, our evolutionary roots are more surprising.

Humans, jellyfish, comb jellies, and sea anemones share a common ancestor.

We are talking about the oldest multicellular organisms on the planet. And we are looking at the first development of neurons, a communications system between sensory inputs and physical outputs or reactions.

Leonid Moroz, a neuroscientist at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience in St. Augustine, FL. Moroz, thinks neurons originated twice — once in ancestors of comb jellies, which split off at around the same time as sea sponges, and once in the animals that gave rise to jellyfish and all subsequent animals, including us.

He found that comb jellies have a relatively “alien” neural system, which operates using different chemicals and architecture than humans do.

How could we possibly be related to beautiful translucent sea creatures?

The relatively new field of comparative genomics -- the interface of genomics and developmental biology -- looks for relationships between genome sequences in different species.

It enables scientists to determine what physical and structural features were present in animals early on.

This unprecedented data points to the order of evolutionary events that led to the incredible diversity of species.

New research, led by Timothy Jegla, an assistant professor of biology at Penn State University, has found that the genes responsible for electrical communication among nerve cells in our brains evolved more than a half billion years ago in the comb jelly.

Jegla’s findings support the initial hypothesis posed and studied by Moroz.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Once nerve cells developed the ability to generate electrical signals, a whole new chain of evolutionary events cascaded. Eventually, human brains evolved to contain about 85 billion neurons.

Jellies lack brains but their neural circuitry is highly sophisticated, containing about 6,000 neurons. A series of interconnected nerve cells, called a nerve net, help jellies to assess salt levels, swim in a pulsatile fashion, and dive to avoid fresh water. Check out this awesome video -- it’s magical!

Box jellyfish have recently been shown to process visual information from an extraordinary set of 24 eyes and use visual cues to navigate to a preferred habitat.

Scientists hope to be able to gain more important insights into the evolution of nerve cells by additional research with sea anemones and jellies.

This research path may lead to a better understanding of neurological diseases, which are caused when the genes associated with nerve cells mutate. This, in turn, may help us to develop preventions and cures.

Read more about Beautiful Evolution, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including The Beautiful Evolution Of Mimicry Now, Check Out Evolution’s New Tree of Life, Honoring the Beautiful Evolution of Taste Now, The Incredible Evolution & Art of Bugs Now and The Evolution of Luxury Now.

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IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: by Aurelien Guichard. Jellyfish.
2. Image: by Leonid Moroz. Beroe After it has Swallowed Another Comb Jelly,  Bolinopsis.
3. Image: Courtesy of  Pang & Martindale. Ctenophores.
4. Image: by Olena Shmahalo, for Quanta Magazine. The Earliest Animals and The Origin of Neurons.
5. Image: by Joshua Lambus. Comb Jelly.
6. Image: by Arden Mathieson, of Biodiversity of the Central Coast. Lobed Comb Jelly Fish.
7. Image: by Derek Keats. Cauliflower Jellyfish, Cephea cephea.
8. Image: by Rennett Stowe. Jellyfish in Flight.
9. Image: by Frazier Nivens & Leonid Moroz. Courtesy of Quanta Magazine. Comb Jellyfish.
10. Image: Courtesy of Sharif Mirshak. Still from Plankton- Ctenophores.
11. Image: Courtesy of eLife - The Journal. The Periodic Membrane Skeleton Structure in Live Hippocampal Neurons.
12. Image: by S. Jeong, for NICHD. Mouse Neurons. Neurons from a Mouse Spinal Cord.
13. Image: by Danielle Bauer. Jellyfish at the Vancouver Aquarium.
14. Image: by Mike Fisher. Japanese Nettle Jellyfish.
15. Image: by yuxi3200. Jellyfish at Monterey Bay Aquarium.
16. Image: by Jian Feng, of University at Buffalo. Protein Found Only in Neurons (red) & an Enzyme that Synthesizes Dopamine (green). Cell DNA (blue).
17. Image: by Eric Vance, U.S. EPA. Courtesy of USEPA Environmental-Protection-Agency. Comb Jellies (ctenophores) are Predators of Larval Fish.
18. Image: by Steve Rupp, for National Science Foundation. Sea Anemone.
19. Image: by BN App - Download now!
20. Image: by Orin Zebest. Comb Jelly.