[HN Gopher] How Electric Fish Were Able to Evolve Electric Organs
___________________________________________________________________
How Electric Fish Were Able to Evolve Electric Organs
Author : NickRandom
Score : 45 points
Date : 2022-06-05 09:28 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.utexas.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.utexas.edu)
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Aren't all animals 'electric', like galvanic muscle twitching?
| Didn't these fish just repurpose existing electrical
| infrastructure for a different use?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Yeah, all organs ARE electric by default.
| spqr0a1 wrote:
| Most of evolution is repurposing existing infrastructure for
| different purposes; The details are still interesting.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _Didn 't these fish just repurpose existing electrical
| infrastructure for a different use?_
|
| It's well established nowadays that a gene duplication occurred
| in the ancestor of all bony fish. That's sometimes a problem
| for people doing gene knock-out experiments on zebra fish,
| where you sometimes knock out not only the target but also the
| homolog because the two are still too similar, despite 425 Myr
| of evolution.
|
| Land vertebrates do not have this duplication because they are
| descended from an ancestor of the coelacanth.
|
| What happened with these fish is that they repurposed the
| backup. They had two Na channel genes, one in muscles, and one
| spare.
| robonerd wrote:
| Coelacanth are bony fish too. Bony fish contrasts with
| cartilaginous fish, e.g. sharks and rays.
| superb-owl wrote:
| Robert Sapolsky talks a bit about how Electric Fish communicate
| via electricity in this lecture on Ethology [1].
|
| It feels like we're just beginning to discover the extent to
| which non-human communication blankets the earth. Sounds, colors,
| chemicals, sub/supersonic vibration, all seem to mediate
| communication between various species, including plants and
| fungi.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISVaoLlW104
| NickRandom wrote:
| My First thoughts on reading "... This control region is in most
| vertebrates, _including humans_ ," was (of course) about some
| kind of mutant comic-book super-hero/villain. My Second thought
| was 'sharks with friggin' laser beams'. Sometimes learning stuff
| is fun :)
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Fish weren't able to evolve anything. Something evolved in
| certain fish.
|
| The different ways of saying it communicate different premises.
| The fish have no agency in their own evolution. More importantly,
| there is no agency, it's just so ething that happens.
| robonerd wrote:
| If you're going to complain about the way a question was asked,
| I think you should at least try to answer the question as
| though it were phrased in a better way. Otherwise people might
| be forgiven for assuming you don't actually know the answer and
| are complaining about phrasing/tone to mask your inability to
| actually answer what the asker was getting at.
| superb-owl wrote:
| In the article, they mention that two different species of
| electric fish evolved independently, by two separate genetic
| pathways.
|
| For a long time I believed that if two organisms were
| phenotypically similar, they must have a nearby common ancestor.
| But I keep reading more and more about how nature seems to
| stumble across the same adaptations and mechanisms via many
| different routes. E.g. what we know as a "tree" is not a distinct
| phylogenetic branch, but a form that has evolved independently
| over and over again [1]
|
| [1] https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-
| th...
| doodlebugging wrote:
| >"So, the next step in terms of human health would be to examine
| this region in databases of human genes to see how much variation
| there is in normal people and whether some deletions or mutations
| in this region could lead to a lowered expression of sodium
| channels, which might result in disease."
|
| Actually, I think the next interesting step would be to look for
| a similar gene mutation in those humans who have claimed that
| street lights dim as they pass or that they are sensitive to
| electromagnetic radiation.
|
| Or even more cool - we could induce this genetic change in humans
| so that we all produce electric energy available on demand and
| then design clothing that allows us to harvest and use this
| energy. We would all be self-contained generators and accessing
| this power could be made as simple as using a silicone dongle
| that fits over your little finger or other convenient appendage
| with an adapter for any device on the other end. Fingertip
| chargers for your phones!
|
| Imagine if you will an electric automobile that you own that can
| only be started when there is a driver in the seat who has
| connected the vehicle's electronics to their own body,
| authenticating themselves to the vehicle. You could lock a
| vehicle to a specific person while still enabling a valet mode
| that provides highly limited functionality to a non-
| authenticatable operator.
|
| This vehicle needs no batteries since the power is supplied by
| the operator and as long as the operator is still alive and
| connected the vehicle can be driven.
|
| I'm no electrical engineer or geneticist and I don't play one in
| my driveway but this seems like a great use case for gene-editing
| technology. Elimination of the need for batteries could stop a
| lot of environmental degradation from the mining and processing
| of ores. If we all could be self-contained powerpacks then there
| would be no need for batteries.
|
| I wonder whether this means that a user would need to consume
| more calories to supply all that energy. That might strain food
| resources globally. Hmmmm, a lot to consider here.
|
| Y'all are smart. I'm sure you'll identify all the hurdles to
| conquer and come up with some cool tech in the process. I'll work
| on more bullshit ideas.
| peteradio wrote:
| Wouldn't want some jagoff putting me to sleep as he charges his
| cell phone off my literal back, no thanks, its just poor idea
| that turns a person into a freakshow of unintended
| consequences.
| retrac wrote:
| Well, you tickled my curiosity. Electric eels can produce up to
| 1 kilovolt at up to 1 amp as low frequency AC. That's about a
| kilowatt of instantaneous power. The problem is they can only
| do it for a few milliseconds. While electric eels can shock
| continuously every few seconds for multiple-hour periods, that
| seems to be very much on the "low setting". When dealing with
| e.g. alligators they'll give maybe a dozen full power blasts
| over a minute and then they need a nap.
|
| That works out to about 200 joules of energy released over the
| period. Enough to run a small LED lightbulb for about 15
| minutes. But you've burned a whole day's worth of eel-calories.
| May be more feasible as a weight-loss technique than a way to
| recharge your laptop.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Reality is the real dream assassin here. LOL!
|
| Maybe if we tweaked the gene expression so that it only
| affects body hairs, effectively turning each hair into a
| wind-powered generator. The individual contributions might be
| small but cumulatively may be more significant.
|
| It would be one way to kill the whole barber, hair stylist,
| and Brazilian wax businesses and taking it further, it would
| also potentially affect all clothing manufacturers globally
| by encouraging full nudity which might remove body-shaming
| issues by promoting health and fitness and better diet
| choices.
|
| Tattoos become a simple way to set yourself apart and
| advertisers buy skin billboard space so individuals can
| monetize their derrieres.
|
| Gillette, Schick, Dollar Shave Club all fade into obscurity
| or get marginalized as tools only useful for pre-surgery
| shaves.
|
| Maybe I need to step away from the computer and move on with
| life. Thanks for reading.
| klyrs wrote:
| Sounds like an excellent weight loss strategy...
| Havoc wrote:
| Presumably started with a little feisty one that thought he could
| do things with his mind if he just concentrated hard enough...
| melony wrote:
| Praise be Lamarck!
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Actual paper - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm2970
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-06-05 23:02 UTC)