What makes vertebrates special? We can learn from lancelets
Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - 13:20
in Biology & Nature
Scientists once thought that humans must have 2 million genes to account for all our complexity. But since sequencing the human genome, researchers have learned that humans only have about 19,000 to 25,000 genes—not many more than a common roundworm. Now, evidence suggests humans and other vertebrates gained their unique attributes not from sheer number of genes, but from how they regulate the genes they have.