#头条创作挑战赛 #
The octopus species has always amazed humans, and over the years various studies and discoveries have pushed their status to the "altar", becoming one of the most likely creatures to dominate the earth after the extinction of human beings. Regarding their level of intelligence, I feel that there is no need to give any examples, the main thing is that there are too many, and I don't know what to talk about.
Why do they have such high intelligence? Now scientists seem to have finally found a clue that also connects octopuses with humans, even deep into the genome.
New clues
Have you heard of the "jumping gene"? This unheard of gene actually accounts for 45% of the human genome, and the "jump gene", as a very short DNA sequence, has the ability to copy and paste itself to another location in the genome, and can even be cut and pasted, which sounds very advanced genes and is related to the genome evolution of multiple species.
However, these "jumping genes" are basically dormant, basically unable to function due to mutations and the cell's own defense mechanisms. But there is a "jumping gene" in the human body, called the LINE gene. These LINE genes are heavily regulated by our brains, and they play an important role in our ability to learn and memory formation in the hippocampus.
Speaking of which, have you already guessed the answer to the topic of this issue? That's right, octopuses also have this gene.
On May 18, Graziano Fiorito, a study co-author and biologist at the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station (SZAD) in Naples, Italy, published a study in the journal BMC Biology, in which he and other researchers found through gene sequencing that there are also many "jumping genes" in the genomes of common octopuses and double-spotted octopuses, which are present in the vertical leaf farmers of octopuses, which is the secret of octopuses' powerful learning ability.
The study was discovered by chance, and scientists believe that octopuses, despite their distant relationship with vertebrates, exhibit similar behaviors and neuroplasticity to vertebrates. What sets them apart from other soft-lying animals is that they can constantly adapt to new problems and find ways to solve them. Such similarities may originate at the genetic level.
So the researchers studied in-depth research at the genetic level, and when measuring the transcription of an octopus's "jumping gene" to RNA and the clipping to proteins, they accidentally detected significant activity in the brain region responsible for the behavioral plasticity of the octopus, apparently affecting the octopus's behavior to change its behavior in response to different stimuli.
postscript
This discovery links the octopus's high intelligence to the LINE gene in the "jumping gene", and proves that the role of the "jumping gene" is not only to copy and cut everywhere, but also plays an important role in the process of generating cognition in organisms. The discovery also led scientists to a new topic: the study of intelligence and how it develops and changes between individuals within a species.
The distance between octopuses and us on the tree of life is not 108,000 miles that can be explained, and it is obviously not very general to say that it is because we and octopuses have a common ancestor a long, long time ago that we have such the same genes.
This "jumping gene" is more likely to be an example of convergent evolution, octopus and humans evolved separately in two lineages, but because the "jumping gene" is very useful, so they invariably chose this direction.