Junkburst

My hotel here in Wisconsin has a great high-speed connection and I have some downtime, and so I'll post on a really interesting paper that just came out that may tell us a lot about how we got so complex. When I say "we," I'm speaking very broadly. Humans, other mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibian, and fish are all very complex, particularly compared to our closest invertebrate relatives. The picture I've attached here is of Ciona, one of these closest relatives. Little more than a small sleeve-shaped filter feeder, it's not too impressive. In particular, its body is not too complicated. It doesn't have ears, eyes, noses, stomachs, livers, and the many other organs that vertebrates have--organs that have to be constructed from many kinds of cell types. Scientists have been studying the genes of Ciona and our other invertebrate cousins to find some clues to what happened to give rise ...