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Jellyfish and human eyes use similar genetic building blocks

scienceblogs.com — Despite the massive evolutionary gulf that separates jellyfish and vertebrates, both groups construct their eyes using similar genetic components. It's possible that they kept an ancient 'eye program' that their shared ancestor already had.

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  • 1807, on 06/17/2008, -8/+2I can haz JELLIES?
  • seanmx, on 06/17/2008, -2/+3We evolved from Jellyfish. I know it.
    • herschman321, on 06/17/2008, -0/+4maybe they evolved from us
    • mecharabbit, on 06/17/2008, -1/+7No, the almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster had extra jellyfish parts left over when he created humans.
    • dsmx, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1I believe that's "I knew it".
  • Maynza, on 06/17/2008, -2/+15MY EYES ARE JELLYFISH????

    Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    • RussellDovey, on 06/17/2008, -1/+5Well yeah, the eye-tentacles make it obvious. I mean, how else would you eat a sandwich while driving?

      Everyone else has eyentacles, yeah?
    • Terr01, on 06/17/2008, -1/+1If you really love to eat seafood, you'll end up like The Corinthian.
  • Jexie, on 06/17/2008, -5/+6I can't wait for the first fundy who has to post "My grandpapy weren't no jellyfish!"
    • relic180, on 06/17/2008, -0/+3My grandpapy weren't. I'm not so sure about my grandmamy though...
  • Borgcube636, on 06/17/2008, -4/+25I, for one, welcome our new Jellyfish ancestors.
  • cslawren, on 06/17/2008, -2/+29Am I the only one who didn't know jellyfish had eyes?
    • herschman321, on 06/17/2008, -3/+1i was expecting the onion
      • facelesscoward, on 06/17/2008, -2/+3Why? I learned about jellyfish eyespots probably being the one of the earliest genetic precursors to the human eye in AP Biology two years ago. Nothing new, I don't think.
    • CJDUFFMAN, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2there is only a few species of jellyfish with eyes and it is under dispute whether it is even in the same phylum. box jelly fish can think...
  • suckanucka, on 06/17/2008, -4/+17wtf is evolution?

    Sincerely,
    Ben Stein
  • alpha88, on 06/17/2008, -1/+4Who wants to go Jellyfishing?
  • Iwantawii, on 06/17/2008, -2/+3I wish humans could have 360º vision with the aid of more eyes. Why couldn't we have evolved this? Surely it would have been a huge evolutionary advantage.
    • herschman321, on 06/17/2008, -4/+2that obviously proves that jellyfish are more evolved than we are
    • rootsm3, on 06/17/2008, -0/+6And not to mention gorgeous.
    • carpespasm, on 06/17/2008, -0/+8not as much as you might think. two eyes can cover a lot of ground (180 degrees including perhipheral i think) and when you couple that with moving your head and eyes in their place we can see around more than 360 degrees already. Real estate in the skull is pretty tight as it is, and replacing brain with another set of eyes would probably be more hurtful than helpful, especially since we can't make much use of that field of vision aside from as an early warning system for something approaching behind us, which hearing and possibly smell can already cover most of. Now if we got a second set of arms facing behind so we can use two sets of tools at once sign me up.
      • akilleen, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1"Now if we got a second set of arms facing behind so we can use two sets of tools at once sign me up."

        Imagine the drum solos!
      • recruz, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1from what i understand, our dependency on our "180 degrees" of vision that you refer to, is a bit of a limitation. People who are blind have much more acute hearing, feeling, smell- so being able to see actually helps prevent us from being able to sense things behind us- i always get sneaked up on from behind ("insert" gay jokes here)
    • relic180, on 06/17/2008, -0/+6I already have 360º vision. You must have missed the meeting where they handed out bonus eyes.

      Next year, 380º vision! YO JOE!!
  • Craga89, on 06/17/2008, -3/+4Parallel evolution is some pretty interesting stuff. Organisms completely isolated from one another arriving at the pretty much the same evolutionary outcome. There could conceivably be organisms very similar to us walking around on another planet somewhere.

    Come to think of it, thats a good explanation of why all aliens on star trek look like humans with playdoh stuck randomly to their facial features. Or maybe its just because of thier budgets =P.
    • galore, on 06/17/2008, -1/+2I don't think that jellyfish and humans qualify for "pretty much the same evolutionary outcome". Despite non-obvious similarities of the eye...
    • Mattman723, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1It's actually because of an ancient race that seeded the primordial soups of developing planets. It was an interesting episode lol.
  • rootsm3, on 06/17/2008, -4/+1So we went from jellyfish to ape to human? Wait what?
    • relic180, on 06/17/2008, -0/+7Ape, Human, JellyFish, Back to Human, and finally Lemur.
      • rootsm3, on 06/17/2008, -1/+1Ohhhh yes. I forgot about my tail and buggy eyes.
      • AugustusOsari, on 06/17/2008, -0/+0We're all Lemurians?

        I *knew* it! So, where can I find HIMMEL? I don't want to die when ***** starts getting ugly.
  • RussellDovey, on 06/17/2008, -4/+7You know, this is actually a piece of evidence that I expect intelligent design wanke... advocates to seize upon. They will likely claim that the similar genetic building blocks are evidence that GOD-DUH inserted one "eye design" into all species that use eyes, so eyes didn't evolve independently.

    (Yes, I know that this is the only type of jellyfish that uses these similar genes. That won't matter to the ID crowd.)
    • Hetman, on 06/17/2008, -1/+8It really does not matter. Creationist do not care about facts. It is all faith based.
      • stabalan, on 06/17/2008, -1/+4That's funny, so is evolution. It's a theory, but taught as truth.
        • AugustusOsari, on 06/17/2008, -1/+2That's funny, so is gravity. It's a theory, but taught as truth.
        • eosp, on 06/17/2008, -1/+3In the scientific method, theory is the highest level of knowledge possible. It may certainly be possible that it can be tossed out of the water by the next experiment, and scientists know that. But we can't prove anything to the extent that you can't argue with it anymore. There is no "absolute truth" level above the theory in science.

          I'm a Christian and I even understand this.
        • stabalan, on 06/17/2008, -2/+0Last I checked, gravity was a law. By the way, where did that law come from?
        • Hetman, on 06/17/2008, -1/+2It is called the theory of universal gravity. Not the law of universal gravity. Just look it up. The same can be said about the theory of electromagnetism, or theory of relativity. They are all theories. At no point does a theory become a law. That is just ridiculous.
        • stabalan, on 06/17/2008, -2/+1I never said gravity was a theory that turned into a law. The theory of universal gravitation is a theory, hence the name, but gravity is in fact a law of physics.
        • nitsuj, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1"Last I checked, gravity was a law. By the way, where did that law come from?"

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity

          To quote: "Modern physics describes gravitation using the general theory of relativity, but the much simpler Newton's law of universal gravitation provides an excellent approximation in most cases."

          So clearly, that law came from Newton and it is an approximation - albeit a useful one.

          Your point was...?
        • stabalan, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1So Newton created the law? It must have not been around before him. Is that the point you're getting at?
        • nitsuj, on 06/18/2008, -0/+1"Is that the point you're getting at?"

          You asked where the law came from. Newton derived this law which describes an approximation of gravity. This law was not defined before Newton.

          The general theory of relativity describes gravity to a much higher degree of accuracy although it's harder to use than Newton's law. Newton's law couldn't accurately predict the orbit of Mercury for example.

          Maybe you are confusing 'Law' of gravity with the actual thing we experience as gravity?
      • Hetman, on 06/17/2008, -0/+2Maybe you should look up the difinition of a theory as it pretains to the scientific community.
  • Jareth86, on 06/17/2008, -1/+1They created a Tentacool!
  • leerayIG88, on 06/17/2008, -0/+1If I was a oven mitt.....
  • jennicamorel, on 06/17/2008, -2/+1woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! this effects my daily life immensely
  • TreadNotOnMe, on 06/17/2008, -1/+1The Darwinian model predicts that we'd start out with no eyes, then evolve simple eyes, then evolve complex eyes.

    The Creation model predicts that all the complexity that exists in the world today existed in the beginning, and that the same design might be used over and over again in very different applications.

    Which model best matches this evidence?
  • balilanai, on 06/17/2008, -2/+1The church going creationists will bury this. Start digging!
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