Plachetzki David C, Serb Jeanne M, Oakley Todd H
University of California-Santa Barbara, Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2005 Sep;20(9):465-7. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2005.07.001. Epub 2005 Jul 18.
Although the common descent of all life has been widely accepted since Darwin's time, new research occasionally provides us with arresting reminders of the unity of evolutionary history. Recent papers by Arendt et al. and Panda et al. provide one such reminder. They illustrate that the two classes of animal photoreceptors, ciliary and rhabdomeric photoreceptors, are likely to share an ancient common ancestor and have been evolving in parallel since their duplication over 600 million years ago.
尽管自达尔文时代以来，所有生命具有共同起源这一观点已被广泛接受，但新的研究偶尔会让我们深刻意识到进化历史的统一性。阿伦特等人以及潘达等人近期发表的论文就提供了这样一个例证。他们表明，动物的两类光感受器，即纤毛光感受器和微绒毛光感受器，很可能拥有一个古老的共同祖先，并且自6亿多年前它们复制以来就一直并行进化。
