According to a new research report, the electronic organs used by fish for navigation and communication puzzle scientists because they reappear in unrelated fish, but for some reason, they evolve in the host.
Jason Gallant and others constructed the electric eel genome. To help understand the evolution of genes expressed in electronic organs or EO, the researchers sequenced the RNA products of EO tissue from three fishes that independently evolved these electronic organs. .. They include other strains like electric fish, which have evolved in a unique way for millions of years. The researchers found that despite their different evolutionary trajectories, they have similar gene expression patterns. In each lineage, the expression of genes related to muscle induced current increases, while the expression of genes related to the conversion of electrical stimulation to muscle contraction decreases, which is less in electrical organs. A study conducted by Gallant and colleagues showed that natural selection repeatedly targets universal gene regulatory networks, thereby affecting the development of organs in organisms that need them to survive.