Science Focus
original post »The octopus is one of Earth's most striking creatures, able to exert fine control over a complex and flexible body all while constantly adjusting its coloration through specialized organs on its skin. The creatures also appear to be rather smart; researchers have found evidence of complex problem solving and observational learning. All of this from an animal that is part of the mollusks, a group we often associate with things like clams.
Of course, mollusks started diversifying back when the only vertebrates were fishes, so that's plenty of time for them to evolve some distinctive features. To get a better glimpse of what, exactly, evolved, researchers have now sequenced the genome of the California two-spot octopus. The answer to the octopus' surprising smarts seems to be the expansion of two types of genes, along with the generation of hundreds of new ones.
Sequencing the genome wasn't an easy task. Unlike some invertebrates like Drosophila, the octopus' genome is roughly the same size as many mammals (2.7 billion bases long, about 90 percent the size of the human genome). But a team of researchers has managed to get 83 percent of those bases, covering almost all of the organism's 33,700 genes. According to author Daniel Rokhsar, the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) was chosen simply because it's easy to work with in a lab.
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