Science, Space and Technology News 2024
A new study reveals that critical proteins for nerve signaling, particularly potassium ion channels from the Shaker family, predated the evolution of the nervous system, existing in early single-celled organisms. This challenges previous notions of their evolutionary timeline and suggests foundational elements of the nervous system were established earlier than thought.
This suggests that, rather than evolving alongside the nervous system as previously thought, these ion channels were present before the origin of the nervous system.“We tend to think of evolution as a one-way march toward greater and greater complexity, but that often isn’t what occurs in the natural world,” said Timothy Jegla, associate professor of biology in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and leader of the research team.
“We thought types 2 through 4 were thought to have evolved on a more recent timeline, but our new work suggests that the Kv2-4–like channels found in choanoflagellates are actually the oldest subtype,” Jegla said. This work also adds to growing evidence that many elements of the nervous system were present before the nervous system as a whole evolved, Jegla noted.
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