![]() ![]() ![]() Evidence from prior studies suggests that LINE jumping genes are tightly regulated by the brain, but are still important for learning (opens in new tab) and for memory formation in the hippocampus. What can we learn from the encounter In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself - a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. But one kind of transposon in humans, known as the Long Interspersed Nuclear Elements or LINE, may still be active. The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. In both humans and octopuses, most transposons are dormant, either shut down due to mutations or blocked from replicating by cellular defenses, the study authors reported. Genetic sequencing recently revealed that two species of octopus - Octopus vulgaris and Octopus bimaculoides - also have genomes that are filled with transposons, according to a study published May 18 in the journal BMC Biology. Jumping genes are short sequences of DNA with the ability to copy and paste or cut and paste themselves to another location in the genome, and they've been linked to the evolution of genomes in multiple species. The clues that scientists uncovered are called "jumping genes," or transposons, and they make up 45% of the human genome. ![]()
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