It seems that a fossilized fish found about four years ago in the Arctic had wrists, forearms, elbows and shoulders that may have been the precursors for the equivalent arm parts that we humans enjoy today. I enjoy my arms, don’t you? Anyway, it seems that more and more of biology is discovering the great number of genetic similarities that living beings on this planet share, as mentioned in my last post ‘The Tree of Life Gets a Pruning’. One suggestion from the work concerning the Tiktaalik performed by Neil Shubin, professor of anatomy at Chicago University, is that the fin in fish is a refinement of the original, or older hand structure. Indeed, Shubin found that the genes exist in modern fish for this arm development, but are turned off. Clearly, very small changes in genes can manifest as very large differences in outward appearance in living beings. For instance, research has shown that some genes involved in the development of the human eye and vision, are also involved in jellyfish metabolism. How about that? Shubin has written what sounds to be an interesting book on the subject, titled “Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 billion-year History of the Human Body”. You might want to use your wrists for a little book-reading enlightenment.

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‘Genetic archeologists’ (see link below) in Norway and Switzerland have simplified one of the two supergroups into which evolutionary biologists have divided all life on Earth. The two main groups are prokaryotes, organisms that do not arrange their genetic material into a nucleus (bacteria) and eukaryotes, such as humans. The eukaryotes have been divided into four subgroups now, instead of five, which include: plants (including red and green algae), opisthokonts (humans, fungi, amoebas), excavates (parasites and free-living organisms) and the new group, SAR. The acronym stands for Stramenophiles, Alveolates, and Rhizaria (SAR), and has been redefined due to the effort to examine 5000 genes, the largest number of genes from higher organisms to be studied at one time. Of those 5000 genes, 123 were found to be common among them all, and were given extra research attention. This new data forced the reorganization of the eukaryote branch.

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Just a quick note here that Whole Foods has decided to stop offering plastic grocery bags by Earth Day (April 22nd). This is a good thing, although, they will still be offering free paper bags. I’m waiting for a store to make the truly responsible policy decision of charging for their bags, enough to encourage people to bring their own. Of course, I’m really not sure why they don’t do this already (as in Europe), as they could make a profit from this as well, and no store in America is ever adverse to that…

• Whole Foods

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