Molecular Evolution: Towards the Origin of Metazoa

Download or read book Molecular Evolution: Towards the Origin of Metazoa written by Werner E.G. Müller and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently, new genes and their proteins that revealed striking new insights into the early evolution of multicellular animals have been identified and characterized from members of the lowest metazoan phylum, the porifera (sponges). The unexpected result was that the sequences obtained from sponge displayed high similarity to those found in higher metazoa; in consequence, it was concluded that during the transition from protozoa to metazoa the major structural and regulatory proteins evolved only once. The data gathered are now powerful arguments to establish monophyly of metazoa; in addition, new insights on the evolutionary diversification of metazoa were obtained.