8 ms·
Octopuses and squids can rewrite their RNA
- itchyjunk 10y agoTaking inspiration from the cephalopods, our definition of intelligence also needs to be revised more frequently. Recently, we've started acknowledging more of the complexity in other animals, like dolphins for example. I like their color changing behaviors as well[0]. It's is a form of communication we don't fully understand yet. [0] http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/how-octopuses-and-squids-change-color http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/how-octopuses-and-squids-chan...
- tyre 10y agoTheir color changing behaviours are even crazier because they are color blind! Their eyes can "see" the wavelengths, due to their shape, but not process colors the way we do.
- degenerate 10y agoSo in this way, perhaps it's like a morse code to them. They can "talk" by shifting colors and detecting changes in the visual wavelengths... similar to how we vibrate our vocal cords at different frequencies to form words, and detect the changes in pitch with our ear drum. Now that I've written it out, it seems silly to put "talk" in quotes. They are definitely talking. We just don't know the language. This makes me want to watch Arrival again :)
- pavel_lishin 10y agoWait, if they can "see" the wavelengths - which presumably means they can differentiate between them - how is that not color vision? Are you saying that despite the fact that their retinas are sensitive to multiple wavelengths of light, their brains throw this information away?
- DiThi 10y agoIt's the opposite. The retinas don't have separate receptors for multiple colors, but the iris has a funky "W" shape, which amplifies the (usually undesired) chromatic aberration which is then interpreted by the brain.
- waywardyouth 10y ago'can't process colors the way we do' somehow becomes 'can't process color' .. this I think is roughly what Ned Block called The Harder Problem re consciousness
- therein 10y agoCorrect but it was David Chalmers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers
- fenollp 10y agoHere's the paper: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/17fb/c72811582e03bde433a709c5439b65c86bf2.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/17fb/c72811582e03bde433a709... As a color blind person (as are 20% of half the population at least), I wonder if we can create glasses that mimic this shape of lens and just gradually train our brains to recognise the added spectrum. (I know about Enchroma, but their marketing disgusts me)
- orthecreedence 10y agoI've thought for a long time that before we focus on communicating with extraterrestrials, it makes more sense to find ways to communicate more fluently with existing beings on our planet, starting with ones we share a common intelligence with (dolphins, raccoons, cephalopods, etc). We take the animals on this planet for granted, as "lesser than," but what's to say they aren't as intelligent and just express it in different ways? You could say "well dolphins don't build cars or xboxes!" and I would say "dolphins also aren't systematically destroying the planet they live on." I know we're slowly bridging the gaps of communication with animals (for instance, dogs who can understand verbal language or dolphins who can associate objects with words), but it would be interesting if there were more fluent ways of communication besides verbal. I think it would do us well to master these.
- taco_emoji 10y ago> "dolphins also aren't systematically destroying the planet they live on." You're arguing that dolphins aren't destroying the planet because, what, they decided not to? Dolphins may or may not be smarter than we give them credit for, but the fact that they don't exhibit one particular behavior is not evidence of anything at all.
- mannykannot 10y agoI take it to be a comment on human intelligence.
- rarec 10y agoDolphins not systematically destroying the planet might be more of a lack of ability to instead of desire. Hard to say, really, they're woefully limited in their ability to affect their environment.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoYeah, this Dolphin-worship reeks of "noble savage".
- waynecochran 10y agoSelf modifying code! Maybe nature uses Common Lisp macros.
- azrazalea 10y agohttps://www.xkcd.com/224/ https://www.xkcd.com/224/
- Herodotus38 10y agoOriginal Article (thankfully not behind a paywall): http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6 http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6
- jfarlow 10y agoLooks like cephalopods have useful, active, and conserved ADAR activity that changes an Adenosine to an Inosine in many RNA transcripts. ADAR (Adenosine Deaminase acting on RNA) is a protein that recognizes specific RNA sequences (likely, specific structures) [1]. And upon recognition it switches an RNA's 'A' to an 'I' (a non-canonical base pair (RNA is usually made of A, C, U, & G only)). The ribosome compiles a non-canonical 'I' as if it were a 'G'. So this process effectively intercepts some DNA sequences prior to compilation and swaps some (very particular) A's to G's with respect to coding a protein. This process was found by noticing this very consistent 'mistake' between DNA and and expected sequences in high-throughput analysis. So during the minification of the genetic code prior to compiling, under certain conditions some very specific characters are swapped for out-of-bounds characters that are read-through as an alternative character (if the surrounding code suggests it should). So you can have alternate builds without changing either the source code or the compiler, but instead by turning on/off a bit in the the minifier (expression of ADAR protein). This process happens a bit in humans and flies, but seems to happen a lot in squid - specifically in the code around compiling neuronal proteins. Curiously they show that this editing process slows down the evolution around those neural proteins that utilize this mechanism. Because the ADAR protein recognizes the structure of an entire sequence set in order to perform its A->I swap, if there is any mutation in the entire sequence set, no A->I swap occurs. And if no A->I swap occurs, the neural protein likely doesn't work as well, lowering the fitness in any individual that has sequence drift anywhere in that entire recognized region. In organisms that do not have this A-I shift mechanism there is more evolutionary sequence drift in similar proteins than in Cephalopods which utilize the A->I swap. Super cool! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADAR1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADAR1
- Herodotus38 10y agoThanks for the summary. You should be happy to know that because of this I went to your company's website, and realized it was the second time I have done so after reading a good in-depth comment of yours (or perhaps another cofounder).
- amelius 10y agoDoes that mean that techniques such as RNA-Seq ([1]) will fail on these species? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA-Seq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA-Seq
- arrosenberg 10y agoRNA Seq will still work, but you'd probably notice more variation over time within a specific individual if you did multiple sequencings.
- dnprock 10y agoDo this mean we need to eat more of them? I'm all for it :)
- dluan 10y agoOriginal paper: http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6 http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6 Does anyone know if RNA recoding happens in other species, or where it started from? The paper mentions that RNA recoding sites slow down genomic evolution, so what species out there have the most conserved genomes + recoding sites? This paper was freaking fascinating.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rflrob 10y agoAccording to [1, probably paywalled], it's present in both vertebrates and invertebrates, but not plants or fungi, indicating that it's animal specific, but still quite ancient. What the authors have found is not that cephalopods can edit their RNA, but that they do it a lot more than has previously been reported in other animals. I assiduously avoid studying the brain and behavioral complexity because that stuff is incredibly complicated, but I'm pretty skeptical about the authors' claims in the popular press that this is likely responsible for---or even particularly connected to---cephalopod intelligence or learning. My bet would be that in general, you get intelligence by complicated wiring, but that you don't necessarily need complicated neurons to do that wiring. By analogy, what makes the latest Intel processors so much better than an 8086 has a little bit to do with the 64-bit architecture, but a lot more to do with the radically smaller transistors. [1] http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-biochem-060208-105251 http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-biochem...
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago> By analogy, what makes the latest Intel processors so much better than an 8086 has a little bit to do with the 64-bit architecture, but a lot more to do with the radically smaller transistors. I'm not sure you can draw that distinction. I don't program the transistors, I program the architecture, and the 64-bit architecture is massively better than the 8086 architecture. But the 64-bit architecture would not be possible without the radically smaller transistors, because it requires so many more of them, and that wouldn't be possible (on a realistic die size) without the smaller transistors.
- tonto 10y agothere was a 2015 paper (same lab I think) that showed very widespread A-to-I editing in squid also https://elifesciences.org/content/4/e05198 https://elifesciences.org/content/4/e05198
- JaggerFoo 10y agoPfft! Altering RNA. That's nothing. Once I was in a Los Angeles book store, named Bodhi Tree, where a woman was giving a lecture on altering human DNA using psychic power.
- RickHull 10y agoIsn't more that that their RNA is constantly being rewritten than the cephalopods themselves doing writing? What force is responsible for choosing the new RNA? I would not say it is the animals themselves doing the writing as a force of will, sentience, or consciousness, which is what the headline implies. The article itself says: > Their RNA is extensively rewritten, particularly the codes for proteins found in the animals' neurons. Tune in next week for more headline pet peeves
- dluan 10y agoThat's a valid question, for which you shouldn't be downvoted, but you should know that it's not anything about it being a force of will by the animals, more that it's a new behavior of how the animal cells are diverse. In other words, maybe the animal is in higher temperatures that trigger a gene to begin executing this particular 'circuit', which causes proteins to form that make slightly more responsive nerve cell ion channels. Where previously we assumed that variation was spread mainly through genes in DNA, this headline shows that there are other ways beyond just DNA-> RNA-> protein. I may have totally borked this attempted analogy, so hope that helps.
- Mz 10y agoI really don't like their cookbook metaphor. It does nothing to really illuminate the crux of what this allows the creatures to accomplish. As a lay person with a strong interest in such things, I very much wish this article were written with more of an eye towards "Because they can edit their own RNA, they can do thus and such in real terms." instead of hand-wavy metaphors that "it is like the scribe was changed to a master chef and now he can alter recipes."
- mannykannot 10y agoI wonder if this might account for the relatively short life-span of cephalopods?