Haddock worked on the study with Schultz, having met the ambitious young scientist at UCSC when Schultz was working on his Ph.D. “I think it really is a rewrite-the-textbook kind of moment,” said Steven Haddock, a marine biologist at MBARI and adjunct professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. But the patterns in comb jelly chromosomes were distinctly different. (Thea Rogers/University of Vienna)Ĭomposed of scientists from Moss Landing-based MBARI, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley and the San Francisco-based Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the team discovered that patterns in sponge chromosomes matched those found in virtually all other animals’ chromosomes. student at UC Santa Cruz and researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the 30-year-old Schultz has moved on to a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Vienna in Austria. Previously, scientists on both sides of the debate had largely relied on the traditional technique of comparing animals’ individual genes, but the NorCal team found a way to compare their entire chromosomes.īiologist Darrin Schultz led a recent groundbreaking study that many scientists say will change the way they study evolution. “The new analyses are plain for anyone to see.” “It is an extraordinary result,” said Max Telford, a zoologist at University College London who has spent years researching the subject and had always believed the sponge was the sister. In the months since the report was published, the scientific community worldwide has embraced both the team’s findings and its novel approach, with many scientists now predicting that the team’s work will change the way evolution is studied. The scientific consensus siding with the gelatinous deep-sea creature - over the other leading contender, the simple sponge - gelled over the summer after a team of Northern California researchers led by Darrin Schultz, a 30-year-old biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, provided the evidence in the scientific journal Nature in May. Some scientists argue that simple sponges like this one are descendants of the true “sister to all other animals.” (Courtesy of MBARI) Left, The California sea gooseberry, photographed in a laboratory, helped Northern California researchers provide key evidence that the comb jelly, not the sponge, descended from the “sister to all other animals.” (Darrin Schultz © 2021 MBARI)Right, A tulip sponge photographed by the Doc Ricketts, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s remotely operated vehicle (ROV), at a depth of more than 2 miles near Monterey. Now, after years of fierce debate, scientists have the clearest evidence to date which animal alive today is the sister’s true descendant: It’s the mysterious comb jelly, several species of which flourish in Monterey Bay. The other species, the “sister to all other animals,” took its own, narrower evolutionary path. One species kept evolving, eventually producing virtually all the animals on Earth - dinosaurs, humans, cats, mosquitoes. The multi-celled creature thrived, multiplied and evolved, at some point splitting into two distinct species. We still don’t know what the world’s first animal looked like, but scientists say it arose roughly 700 million years ago from a soup of single-celled organisms floating in the ocean.
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