Genome complexity: ancient transcription controls (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, March 21, 2014, 00:48 (3689 days ago) @ David Turell

The sea anemone has both animal and plant characteristics in its genome.:-"A team led by evolutionary and developmental biologist Ulrich Technau at the University of Vienna has discovered that sea anemones display a genomic landscape with a complexity of regulatory elements similar to that of fruit flies or other animal model systems. This suggests that this principle of gene regulation is already 600 million years old and dates back to the common ancestor of human, fly and sea anemone. On the other hand, sea anemones are more similar to plants rather to vertebrates or insects in their regulation of gene expression by short regulatory RNAs called microRNAs."-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140318113816.htm-Note how ancient this complex mechanism is. Still looks like pre-planning to me.