A new study offers some of the strongest evidence yet that comb jellies may have descended from the 'sister to all other animals.'
The first single-celled organisms drifted at sea. Then, some 700 million to 800 million years ago, clusters of cells joined together to form Earth’s first multicellular animal. More recently, the animal family tree split into two branches. One lineage gave rise to all other animals on Earth, from brontosauruses to badgers. The other, dubbed “sister of all other animals,” continued its separate evolutionary journey.
Despite that complexity, in 2008 scientists using computer programs to compare the genes of dozens of species concluded that comb jellies, and not sponges, were the true descendants. But the evidence wasn’t conclusive, so the debate raged on. And later genetic studies using different models pointed the finger at sponges, as many originally suspected.
So, Schultz’s team devised a new approach. Instead of comparing individual genes, they looked at large-scale patterns of gene arrangements on chromosomes. As animals evolve, bits and pieces of DNA get swapped around, but genes often stay on the same chromosome—a trend known as synteny. But occasionally chromosomes fuse and mix, allowing genes to move irreversibly to a new chromosome. Schultz compares it with shuffling cards from two separate decks to make a new deck.
“We're getting a hint of what the genome of something that was alive a billion years ago was like,” Schultz says.
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