Just how smart are cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish) ? Some say as smart as a golden retriever, if a golden retriever could solve complex puzzles (http://boingboing.net/2010/02/01/the-secrets-of-octop.html). Scientists may have recently discovered how these invertebrates can function at a cognitive level to rival some of their distant vertebrate relatives. Published recently in CELL, these organisms have the ability to edit their RNA, a feature could explain why they are so seemingly intelligent and adaptable.
Lets step back for a moment to introductory biology... DNA is the genetic blue print which is locked away in the nucleus of the cells, stable and secure to be passed on to future genreations.The double stranded DNA is translated into single stranded RNA, which subsequenty is transcribed to produce proteins out within the cytoplasm of the cells.
It is at this transcription step where the octopuses have an uncanny ability to "edit" their RNA. Certain enzymes remove adenosine bases that code for proteins and become replaced by inosine bases. This in turn produces proteins which were not originally translated by the DNA blue print..
The CELL study by Liscovitch-Brauer et al. found RNA editing sites across several cephalopod species, following research originally performed with octopuses that use RNA editing to rapidly adapt to temperature changes, and that editing occurs in neural tissues. Their research also found that RNA editing is almost universal among cephalopods.Because this editing was happening in brain tissue, the researchers think that this correlation could indicate that these processes could help give the cephalopods their intelligence.
Adaptation to temperature change is just the tip of the ice berg. Future studies hope to investigate how their editing ability could assist cephalopods adapt to climate change related issues like ocean acidification.
Please see publication Liscovitch-Brauer, Noa et al. (2017) Trade-off between Transcriptome Plasticity and Genome Evolution in Cephalopods. Cell. Volume 169 , Issue 2 , 191 - 202.e11
http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6
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