Worm-like animal sheds light on evolution

SAN DIEGO, June 18 (UPI) -- U.S. biologists say they have found the genome of a worm-like marine animal is providing new information about human evolution.

Linda Holland, a research biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, located at the University of California-San Diego, led scientists in deciphering and analyzing the genetic makeup of the animal called amphioxus, also known as a lancelet -- one of the closest invertebrate relatives of vertebrates.

She and her colleagues from the United States, Europe and Asia studied the genes of the amphioxus species Branchiostoma floridae.

Since amphioxus is evolving slowly, its body plan remains similar to that of fossils from the Cambrian time, making it a comparison point for tracing how vertebrates evolved and adapted. That includes new information about how vertebrates have employed old genes for new functions.

"We are finding that today¹s complicated vertebrate has not invented a lot of new genes to become complicated," said Holland. "Amphioxus shows us that vertebrates have taken old genes and recombined them, changed their regulation and perhaps changed the gene function."

The study appears in the July issue of the journal Genome Research. A corresponding research paper was published in the June 19 issue of Nature.