On Thursday, we ran proteins of muscle tissues of bear,
caribou, chicken leg, deer, elk, and moose through gel electrophoresis in order
to test their phylogeny.
While chicken a completely different species, it’s easy to
see that four of the mammals are very closely related to each other (bear isn’t
one of them, in case you’re wondering). As a matter of fact, they’re all in the
same family! Caribou, deer, elk, and moose are all part of a suborder called
Ruminantia and share similar morphologies. They all have a coat of fur across
their body, possess horns (males in the case of deer) and hoofs, and share
similarly shaped heads as well as overall body shape. Most of them also possess
two-toed feet and a four-chambered stomach where the food they eat get
extensively digested. However, bears aren’t horribly far off, as all five
animals exist in the same superorder. Bears are part of an order called
Canivora, being exclusively carnivores, while the other four mammals are
herbivores. With the results of the gel electrophoresis, we’re hoping to see a
difference in proteins that’ll help us put together a phylogenetic tree for our
subjects, but because hindsight is always 20/20, it’ll be very likely to see
identical results between the mammals in the deer family.
- William J. Murphy, et al. Molecular phylogenetics and the origins of placental mammals. Nature 409 (1 February 2001): 614-618.
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