Biologists may need to rethink where to look for evolutionary changes responsible for the origin of vertebrates, including humans, as a result of research at Stanford University and the University of Chicago.
Chris Lowe and Ari Pani, biologists at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station, discovered some of the essential genetic machinery previously thought exclusive to vertebrate brains in a surprising place – a sea dwelling, bottom-feeding acorn worm, Saccoglossus kowalevskii.
These worms lack vertebrate-like brains, and are, in fact, separated from vertebrates by over 500 million years of evolution. The worms are even classified in a different phylum, the hemichordates.
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