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Some of the life forms on our planet are more peculiar than others.
The octopus is so strange that it often invites comparisons to aliens.
If there is any creature on Earth that is strange enough to have evolved elsewhere, it is the octopus. There are some fringe theories that suggest that aliens might be the octopuses.
A team of scientists led by systems biologist Nikolaus Rajewsky of the Max-Delbrck-Center for Molecular Medicine has just found a new evidence for the existence of the octopus.
It's an interesting one.
It's a trait that the brains of humans and the brains of other mammals have in common.
Rajewsky says that this is what connects them to the ocean.
There are a lot of strange things about the occidental. They're also smart, as are other fish. The brains of squid are almost as complex as those of dogs. There is evidence to suggest that octopuses are capable of dreaming.
Compared to other intelligent animals, their nervous system is highly distributed, with a significant proportion of its 500 million neurons spread throughout their arms. After being severed, each arm is able to make decisions on its own.
The intelligence of the cephalopods has been a mystery. It's relatively common in animals, but they really stand out.
There's something weird about the squid and other arthropods. Their bodies are able to quickly modify their genes to fit their environment. Normally, adaptation starts with the genes, and the changes are passed on to theRNA.
Rajewsky wondered what the other RNA secrets were.
Rajewsky and his team were analyzing 18 samples from dead octopuses that were supplied by the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn institute in Italy. A whole California two-spot octopus and a Hawaiian bobtail squid were also included.
There was a profile of the messenger and smallRNAs provided by the sequence. The results were not in line with expectations.
Rajewsky says that there was a lot of editing going on, but not in areas that were of interest.
The team was able to find a lot of microRNA in the octopuses. They found a bunch of genes in the common octopus and a bunch of genes in the California two-spot squid. The majority of the families were new to the area.
miRNA are non-codingRNAs that are involved in regulating the expression of genes and binding to largerRNAs to help cells fine- tune their genes.
Although the scientists don't know which cells the miRNAs are involved with, the fact that they were preserved in the octopus suggests that they still play a role.
"This is the third-largest expansion of microRNA families in the animal world, and the largest outside of animals," says Zolotarov, who used to work for Rajewsky.
Oysters, which are also mollusks, have acquired just five new microRNA families since the last ancestors they shared with octopuses.
Although the scale is a little different, the only comparable expansions occurred in animals. Around 2,600 mature miRNAS are contained in the human genomes. The count of the miRNA family is comparable to that of chickens and frog.
The discovery suggests that complex intelligence may be related to this expansion.
This isn't the only similarity between the brain of an animal and that of a human. A type of cell called transposons is found in both the brains of humans and the brains of animals. It seems like there is more going on in the head and arms of an animal than we know.
Rajewsky's team is trying to figure out what those miRNAs are doing.
The researchers theorize that the emergence of complex brains in animals may be due to the link between miRNAs and their specialized neuronal functions.
The research was published in a journal.
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