Friday, February 10, 2017

#1 Individual Blog Post: Group Project Introduction/Background

Phylogenetic Tree Built on Muscle Proteins from different kinds of aquatic creatures: Shrimp, Scallop, Mussel, Clam, and Octopus.

We are testing on the muscle proteins of five aquatic species from two different phyla: Mollusca (Scallop, Mussel, Clam, Octopus) and Arthropoda (Shrimp). However, there are two classes under this Mollusca phylum: Bivalve and Cephalopod. By examining their muscle proteins, we can define the closeness of these species on the cladogram. Based on the idea that the more closely evolutionary they are, the more similarity in the protein components they have. The mixture of each protein is made of different types of proteins. Therefore after doing the electrophoresis, the mixture will separate into various bands, and each band which is a type of protein has specific molecular size. 
“The divergence between squid and octopus was estimated using r8s by fixing cephalopod divergence from bivalves and gastropods to 540 million years ago” (Albertin et al 2015). The molecular data has shown that there are changes and adjustments in the DNA sequence which are effective enough so that made the separation of Cephalopod from the monophyletic group of Bivalve and Gastropods. 



Caroline B. Albertin, Oleg Simakov, Therese Mitros, Z. Yan Wang, Judit R. Pungor, Eric Edsinger-Gonzales, Sydney Brenner, Clifton W. Ragsdale, Daniel S. Rokhsar. 2015.The octopus genome and the evolution of cephalopod neural and morphological novelties. Nature. [Internet]. [cited 2017 Feb 10]; 524, 220–224. Available from: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v524/n7564/full/nature14668.html

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