Holstein has long used Hydra as a key model for investigating the evolution of developmental processes of organisms. Hydra as evo-devo modelĪbraham Trembley, philosopher, diplomat, born in Geneva in 1710, died in 1784. Thomas Holstein from the Department of Molecular Evolution and Genomics at the Institute of Zoology at the University of Heidelberg. Major parts of the research were carried out by the team led by Prof. The project was financed by the German Research Foundation, the American National Science Foundation, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the Japanese National Institute of Genetics and the Austrian Fund for the Promotion of Scientific Research. The original publication lists 74 authors from twenty teams of researchers from the USA, Germany, Japan and Austria. As is standard practice with such projects, the Hydra genome was sequenced by a large international consortium. The number of genes in Hydra is considerably higher than that of Drosophila and slightly lower than the number of genes in highly developed organisms such as humans, mouse, pufferfish (Tetraodon nigroviridis) and thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana). This corresponds approximately to the number of Caenorhabditis elegans genes. Despite its alleged primitiveness, Hydra has a large, complex genome of 1.0 to 1.5 billion basepairs and around 20,000 protein-encoding genes. The genome sequence of the freshwater cnidarian Hydra magnipapillata, one of the simplest multicellular animals (Metazoa) was recently published. Holstein, Director, Institute of Zoology, University of Heidelberg © University of Heidelberg Consortium consisting of 20 groups of researchers coli to mice), and scientific curiosity and thirst for knowledge about living organisms is growing exponentially. We now know that it is not just animals that are closely related to humans and plants, researchers' favourite experimental models are now many and varied (from E. Our knowledge about the origin and relationship of organisms has been radically changed thanks to our explosively increasing knowledge of the evolutionary traits contained in DNA. The technological progress of molecular biology, in particular of DNA sequencing, has uncovered information about evolutionary events that previous generations of researchers would not even have dared to dream about.
Carroll's preface in "The Making of the Fittest": ). This library of life is growing by more than 30 storeys per year" (quoted from: Sean B.
If all of the DNA text that we now have was printed into volumes and stacked, they would be twice as high as the 110-storey Sears Tower in Chicago. If printed onto pages like the ones you are reading, that amount of text would fit easily into one volume about the size of this book. To put that number in perspective, in 1982 our total knowledge of DNA sequences from all living species amounted to less than one million characters. "In just twenty years, the quantity of DNA sequences in our databases has grown 40,000-fold, with the vast majority being added in the last decade. Hydra with young polyps that become detached from the parent when fully grown ©
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