Back To Wild

They might be small, spiky, and spineless, but they’re still part of our family. The California purple urchins and we have more than 7,000 genes in common, which makes them close cousins to humans.

This unexpectedly discovery of connection between the humans and sea urchins that are part of the few invertebrates seen on the branch of the evolutionary tree. This conclusion has been arrived at after a recent sequencing of the sea urchin genome.

Gary Wessel is a biology professor at the Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Sea Urchin Genome Sequencing Consortium. He had used the marine animals for decades as models to study human processes like fertilization and embryo development.

“We’ve already learned an enormous amount from the sea urchin, from something as basic as how identical twins form to in vitro fertilization procedures,” Wessel said in a university press release.
“With a complete map of the urchin’s DNA, we can now learn more quickly and easily how each process works during development.”

The results of the genetic sequencing also revealed some surprises for Wessel: The eyeless urchins can actually see! The Genes that are associated with vision are active in the urchins’ tube feet, suggesting that their limbs can actually sense light.

“Nobody would’ve predicted that sea urchins have such a robust gene set for visual perception,” Wessel said. “I’ve been looking at these organisms for 31 years—and now I know they were looking back at me.”

Like a poster that came to life, a group of bioluminescent fungi that were collected from Ribeira Valley Tourist State Park near São Paulo, Brazil, gave out a soft green glow when the lights go out.

The mushrooms are a part of the genes Mycena, a group that includes around 500 species all over the world. Out of these, only around 33 are known to be bioluminescent or capable of producing light through a chemical reaction.

Since 2002 Cassius Stevani, professor of chemistry at the University of São Paulo; Dennis Desjardin, professor of mycology at San Francisco State University in California; and Marina Capelari of Brazil’s Institute of Botany have discovered ten more bioluminescent fungi species, four of which are new to science and are present around Brazil’s tropical forests.

According to the conversationalists said that the armed rebels have started killing and eating protected mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Till date remains of two gorillas have been found. And it is being feared that many of these critically endangered animals may have been killed.

Emmanuel de Merode, director of WildlifeDirect, a conservation group based in Kenya and the DRC. Said that “The fact that two were killed suggests they were deliberately targeted,”. “I suspect there was an element of vandalism.”

At present only around 700 mountain gorillas remain round the world. The gorilla’s that were eaten were identified as silverbacks.

Killings

The first silverback might have been killed by the rebels on January 9, According to a senior park warden Paulin Ngobobo.

“A local farmer was ordered to help the rebels collect the meat of the gorilla,” Ngobobo said. “He told them that the meat was dangerous to eat and immediately informed us of the incident.”

The other killing also could have happened on January 11, but Virunga park wardens only this week found the gorilla’s severed head, feet, skin, and other remains dumped in a pit latrine at a rebel camp.

The dead gorilla was identified as an 18-year-old silverback known as Karema. “This terrible act was done to humans during the Rwandan genocide,” he wrote in his blog.