Long after its ancestors deleted their genetic code for a tough coat of armor, a seafaring octopus has reinvented a recipe for making a shell.
often found washed up on beaches.
A rare exception among cephalopods is the nautilus , which still has an external shell – complete with air chambers that it uses to regulate its buoyancy as it floats through the open oceans. Its shell, and those of the now-extinct cephalopod ancestors, comprise of proteins incorporating minerals such as aragonite and calcite in intricate microscopic structures.
Having originated sometime in the Ordovician period, at least 440 million years ago, ancestors of all modern cephalopods are thought to have had these protective structures.are actually a genus of octopus. In this unusual group, only the females produce a protective spiral casing, by secreting calcifying proteins from their arms. Argonauts wear these shells externally like a nautilus does, and their shapes are almost identical, yet this shell has a completely different microscopic structure.
What's more, instead of being attached to their mantle, argonauts grip onto their shell homes with several of their arms.As most octopuses lost their external casings long ago, researchers have wondered how and why a single group reclaimed a shell. Working with a team of researchers from across Japan, marine biologist Masa-aki Yoshida from Shimane University sequenced the DNA of"Consistent with previous results, most of the proteins are apparently not shared with the shell matrix proteins of [cephalopods and relatives], including those of Nautilus," the teamSome of the genes and the proteins they express have, however, been found in other shelled mollusks like the limpet...
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