There are so many of these stories now: From ScienceDaily:
One of the most exciting discoveries in genome research was that the last common ancestor of all multicellular animals — which lived about 600 million years ago — already possessed an extremely complex genome.
Hold on. What does that mean, exactly?
Using comparative genomic analyses, the researchers reconstructed evolutionarily conserved gene arrangements in animals and investigated their activity in different cell types. They could show that genes that are always present together in the genome in several species, also tend to be active in the same cells. For example, three genes that have been adjacent in several species (e.g., in sponges or cnidarians) for 600 million years are primarily active in a digestive cell type. “Cell types in animals can thus be characterized not only by individual genes but also by specific gene arrangements, and different cell types are also capable of accessing different regions in the genome,” explains Oleg Simakov, evolutionary biologist at the University of Vienna. In addition, the team noted that certain cell types seem to utilize such conserved regions more than others, and thus may represent very ancestral functions. Paper. (paywall) – Bob Zimmermann, Nicolas S. M. Robert, Ulrich Technau, Oleg Simakov. Ancient animal genome architecture reflects cell type identities. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41559-019-0946-7 More.
So if all this complexity got started in something like the twinkling of an eye, are we looking at an argument for creationism? Or what? What exactly is the source of all this very complex, very early information?
See also: Will setting proteins to music help us understand them?
A Single Set Of Genes Drives Pufferfish Spines, Mouse Hair, And Chicken Feathers
and
Direct experimental falsification of Darwinism
Follow UD News at Twitter!