Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

We’ve been evolutionarily divergent for at least a hundred million years so it seems slim, but not zero.

Also don’t forget that mitochondria have their own genome and that it’s undeniable that the avian mito-dna lineage would also experience Darwinian (haha, apt) forces spurring the developments of these capabilities that our ancestors didn’t go through.



> We’ve been evolutionarily divergent for at least a hundred million years so it seems slim, but not zero.

But how much has our mitochondria differed in that time?


"With few exceptions, all animal mitochondrial genomes contain the same 37 genes: two for rRNAs, 13 for proteins and 22 for tRNAs. (...) the comparison of animal mitochondrial gene arrangements has become a very powerful means for inferring ancient evolutionary relationships, since rearrangements appear to be unique, generally rare events that are unlikely to arise independently in separate evolutionary lineages."

Source: Boore (1999) Animal mitochondrial genomes. Nucleic Acids Res. 1999 Apr 15;27(8):1767–1780

Hyperlink: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC148383/

i.e. mtDNA changes a lot less than our "normal" cell nucleus nDNA




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: