Octopuses share genes with humans due to convergent evolution, study says

The new discovery can ‘improve our knowledge on the evolution of intelligence’, says one scientist

Scientists have found genes which may help with cognitive abilities in octopuses. (Getty)

Humans and octopuses share the same “jumping genes” – believed to be associated with learning, memory and other cognitive abilities –a study has suggested.

Graziano Fiorito, research director at the Department of Biology and Evolution of Marine Organisms at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn institute, Italy, part of an international team of more than 20 scientists and researchers, said he hopes the study will “improve our knowledge on the evolution of intelligence.”

The ‘jumping genes’ were present in two species, the Octopus vulgaris or the common octopus, and the Octopus bimaculoides, otherwise known as the Californian octopus.

The genes – also called “transposons” – belong to the Long Interspersed Nuclear Elements (Line) family, which a number of scientists believe are linked to learning, memory and other skills.

“I literally jumped on the chair when, under the microscope, I saw a very strong signal of activity of this element in the vertical lobe, the structure of the brain which in the octopus is the seat of learning and cognitive abilities, just like the hippocampus in humans,” said Giovanna Ponte from Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn.

Giuseppe Petrosino from Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn and Stefano Gustincich from Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia said the discovery is “as a fascinating example of convergent evolution, a phenomenon for which, in two genetically distant species, the same molecular process develops independently, in response to similar needs.”

The discovery of the transposons, found in collaboration with the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati and Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Italy, was made possible through next generation sequencing techniques used to analyse the molecular composition of the genes in the nervous system of the octopus.

“The brain of the octopus is functionally analogous in many of its characteristics to that of mammals,” said Graziano Fiorito, from the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn. “For this reason, also, the identified Line element represents a very interesting candidate to study to improve our knowledge on the evolution of intelligence.”

The study is published in BMC Biology.