Octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish—together referred to as the coleoid, or soft-bodied, cephalopods—are astonishingly clever, dextrous, and ingenious. They problem solve, plan for the future, and have the largest nervous systems among invertebrates. Now, two recent studies with some shared coauthors that were published in Nature Communications on April 21 and May 4, uncover chromosomal restructuring that may explain how the novelties of this curious group evolved.
Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in either study, says the studies will help scientists understand how genes, synapses, and circuits produce complex behaviors. “As a neurobiologist interested in understanding brain evolution, I think this is a major step forward.”
In 2015, some of the authors behind the new studies sequenced the first cephalopod genome, that of the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides). At that time, the researchers noticed that the animal’s genes appeared to be arranged differently ...
