Scientists have found another creature that has evolved in a strange direction, Salmonidium coccyges, the first and only creature found worldwide that does not require breathing or oxygen to survive.
This may be unthinkable for all living things known today, and oxygen is available in most parts of the planet, and living creatures, whether animals or plants, live in an oxygen environment. Organisms breathe oxygen, converting it into energy to maintain bodily functions, and changes in cells in the body also require the participation of oxygen.
All known multicellular eukaryotes cannot survive without oxygen, which has long been a firm belief.
But the discovery of Salmonella coccyges subverts this view, as a multicellular eukaryote, it can survive in an environment without oxygen, and it does not breathe.
This is because Salmonella does not have a mitochondrial genome in its body, which is another strange thing in this amazing creature, because the mitochondrial genome is a key event in the evolution of multicellular eukaryotes.
Mitochondria are organelles of eukaryotic cells, and DNA within mitochondria can be involved in protein synthesis, transcription, and replication. The more complex the structure of multicellular organisms, the more energy is consumed, and the role of mitochondria is to provide energy. Mitochondria are the main places of aerobic respiration, which, with the participation of oxygen, can provide energy to the cells of living organisms, and this part of the energy accounts for 95% of the total energy required for life activities.
The simple understanding is that because of the wired mitochondria, organisms breathe oxygen in order to obtain the energy to support their own life.
It was previously believed that all living things in the world, mammals such as humans, even as small as an ant, have mitochondria and all have mitochondrial genomes, which are the genetic material in the mitochondria.
But Salmonella does not have this, and in its body it replaces the mitochondrial genome, called mitochondrial-associated organelles, which are similar structures to the mitochondria and can provide energy to it without oxygen.
That is, this little bug has evolved to abandon mitochondria and retain similarities to ensure that it can survive in an environment without oxygen.
And all the cells that make up this little bug are not more than ten, Salmon coccyx, which is a parasite that parasitizes in the salmon muscles.
Under the microscope, these parasites look like aliens, the kind of aliens that everyone imagined at the beginning: an inverted triangular head, the head is still bare, two large oval eyes, a particularly small nose or mouth, and a very thin neck.
Salmon tail spores look like this, but those two large oval eyes are not real eyes, but thorny cells that can firmly grasp the host. This is the only thing it has not discarded in the process of evolution, other tissues, muscles, nerve cells, etc., have been discarded, and there is no way to breathe after discarding these.
Therefore, some scientists speculate that salmon tailspores parasitize salmon muscle tissue and are in a low-oxygen environment for a long time, so they choose to discard these tissues to reduce energy consumption. The discarding of these tissues causes it to lose the ability to breathe, and eventually the mitochondrial genome in the body disappears, and instead evolves a mitochondrial-like structure that can obtain energy in the absence of oxygen.
Other scientists believe that Salmon coccyges can obtain the oxygen needed for survival in salmon cells, or absorb the host's molecules for energy, while others believe that Salmon coccyospores may have evolved a single-celled way of survival.
It is generally believed that the evolution of organisms is in a more complex and higher direction, but the evolution direction of Salmon ceratophyllus is strange, it is evolving in the direction of single-celled organisms.
Tissues, nerve cells, muscles, these things salmon tails are all discarded little by little, and even the ability to breathe is lost. But the ensuing benefit is that throwing away these things allows salmon-caudal spores to multiply more and faster, and their vitality seems to be more tenacious, after all, they don't need oxygen to survive now.
If organisms evolve in more complex and higher directions, they are meant to obtain more and better resources for their own and the development of their races. Now it seems that the evolution of salmon tail spore in the lower direction is to save resources, reduce consumption, and there is not so much demand, which seems to be conducive to their survival.
If evolution is to adapt to the environment more, what strange organs or organisms will appear in the future?