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We’ve been evolutionarily divergent for at least a hundred million years so it seems slim, but not zero. Also don’t forget that mitochondria have their own gen

We’ve been evolutionarily divergent for at least a hundred million years so it seems slim, but not zero. Also don’t forget that mitochondria have their own genome and that it’s undeniable that the avian mito-dna lineage would also experience Darwinian (haha, apt) forces spurring the developments of these capabilities that our ancestors didn’t go through.

mulmen 1y ago
> We’ve been evolutionarily divergent for at least a hundred million years so it seems slim, but not zero. But how much has our mitochondria differed in that time?
- sigmaisaletter 1y ago
  "With few exceptions, all animal mitochondrial genomes contain the same 37 genes: two for rRNAs, 13 for proteins and 22 for tRNAs. (...) the comparison of animal mitochondrial gene arrangements has become a very powerful means for inferring ancient evolutionary relationships, since rearrangements appear to be unique, generally rare events that are unlikely to arise independently in separate evolutionary lineages." Source: Boore (1999) Animal mitochondrial genomes. Nucleic Acids Res. 1999 Apr 15;27(8):1767–1780 Hyperlink: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC148383/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC148383/ i.e. mtDNA changes a lot less than our "normal" cell nucleus nDNA