How did higher life on Earth evolve?
London, June 4 (ANI): An international research team has for the first time decoded the complete genome of a brown alga, opening a new door to the understanding the evolution of two key prerequisites for higher life on Earth – multicellularity and photosynthesis. About 100 scientists and technicians, during a five-year research project, successfully decoded all hereditary information – commonly known as the ‘genome’ – on Ectocarpus siliculosus, an up to 20 cm large brown seaweed, which occurs mainly along coastlines in temperate latitudes. They have analyzed approximately 214 million base pairs and assigned these to about 16,000 genes. The biologists, Dr. Klaus Valentin and Dr. Bank Beszteri of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association have been involved in this global project since the planning phase in 2005. “As evolutionary scientists we are particularly interested in why the world has developed as we know it today,” said Klaus Valentin.
