Interestingly, the origins of human nervous system have been traced back to a creature that eventually does not have a nervous system! - The sea sponges.
Scientists have discovered many of the genes that are needed to make a nervous system in the sponge’s cells. Enough to surprise the scientists, this finding also reveals that the nervous system’s evolutionary origins are much older than scientists previously thought.
Sponges are found to contain about 25 genes, very similar to that of what is found in the humans’ synapses of nerve cells, according to the study.
Involved in the study, Todd Oakley, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara said,
Sponges are the first animals to branch off compared to the rest of animals. They don’t have nervous systems, yet we found they have many of the genes that are used in the synapse of modern humans.
There were more in store to surprise the scientists — the proteins made by the sponge genes were found to interact with one another in a similar way as proteins in human synapses.
Who had ever predicted, the origin of such complex structures lies in a no- nervous system creature living deep into the seas!
