Genome sequence of lancelet shows how genes quadrupled during vertebrate evolution
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 - 17:35
in Biology & Nature
The marine invertebrate known as the lancelet, or amphioxus, has tentacle-like strands called oral cirri that strain phytoplankton out of the water. The newly sequenced genome of a dainty, quill-like sea creature called a lancelet provides the best evidence yet that vertebrates evolved over the past 550 million years through a four-fold duplication of the genes of more primitive ancestors.