What octopus and human brains have in common.
Cephalopods like the octopus have a rather large set of microRNAs.
These microRNAs are responsible for gene expression regulation, modulating the protein production behavior.
Cephalopods like octopuses, squids and cuttlefish are highly intelligent animals with complex nervous systems. In “Science Advances”, a team led by Nikolaus Rajewsky of the Max Delbrück Center has now shown that their evolution is linked to a dramatic expansion of their microRNA repertoire.
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Rajewsky has been researching miRNAs for more than 20 years. Instead of being translated into messenger RNAs, which deliver the instructions for protein production in the cell, these genes encode small pieces of RNA that bind to messenger RNA and thus influence protein production.
These binding sites were also conserved throughout cephalopod evolution – another indication that these novel miRNAs are of functional importance.
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