Thursday, May 2, 2019

Sea Anemones Aren't So Simple After All

In a recent article from Science Daily, it states that tube-dwelling anemones have the largest mitochondrial genome on record.  They contain about 81,000 base pairs where, according to a journal entitled Scientific Reports, human mitochondrial DNA has less than 17,000 base pairs.  Meg Daly was saying that since they have simple behavior and movements that scientists always believed them to be simple creatures.  The article states that the mitochondrial DNA of a tube-dwelling anemone defies the typical circular shape and is arranged in fragmented pieces.  Daly and other scientists are trying to find an evolutionary explanation for this.

1 comment:

  1. I understand why Meg Daly and other scientist believed since they are simple creatures that they should have fewer base pairs than humans, but science is difficult to understand at times, and how it evolves, I realize that this assumption could be wrong like it is.

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