A Cool Genome

Another genome has been sequenced, and this time they did Trichoplax adhaerens. This is one of the simplest of multi-cellular animals, and a phylogenetic curiousity: the phylum Placozoa contains only T. adhaerens, a species discovered in 1883 in an aquarium.

The genomic work shows shared genes between T. adhaerens and H. sapiens:

Still, humans share elements with the lowly beast that only become evident through charting its DNA. A gene index published as part of the Nature paper, titled “The Trichoplax Genome and the Nature of Placozoans,” clearly shows many large collections of genes that group together on both the Trichoplax and human chromosomes.