News Section | Genetics
Genetic parasites transformed mammalian reproduction 100m years ago
A new study has found that genetic parasites invaded the mammalian genome more than 100 million years ago and transformed the way mammals reproduce.
According to a study conducted by the Yale University, genetic parasites transformed the uterus in the ancestors of humans and other mammals from the production of eggs to a nurturing home for developing the young ones.
“In the last two decades there have been dramatic changes in our understanding of how evolution works,” Gunter Wagner, senior author of the paper said.
“We used to believe that changes only took place through small mutations in our DNA that accumulated over time.
But in this case we found a huge cut-and-paste operation that altered wide areas of the genome to create large-scale morphological change,” he stated.
The team looked at cells found in the uterus associated with placental development and compared the genetic make-up of these cells in opossums — marsupials that give birth two weeks after conception — to armadillos and humans, distantly related mammals with highly developed placentas that nurture developing foetuses for nine months.
The researchers found that more than 1500 genes that were expressed in the uterus solely in the placental mammals and that the expression of these genes in the uterus is coordinated by transposons, which are essentially selfish pieces of genetic material that replicate within the host genome and used to be called junk DNA.
The findings of the study have been published in the online 25th September journal Nature genetics.
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VERY HELPFUL INFORMATION WHILE STUDING REPRODUCTION….RASHMI HOTA