# 31 AI and Eelgrass, Mysterious Brain Genes and Fish Gills Becoming Human Ears...
Artificial intelligence reveals eelgrass vulnerability, the mystery of the genes in brain development and ears evolving from fish gills.
🤖AI and Eelgrass
Artificial intelligence revealing eelgrass vulnerability…
Common eelgrass is a plant species that inhabits the low shore, down to depths of 10 metres and can form dense seagrass meadows. These meadows, like a lot of plants that live in shallow waters, provide shelter for a variety of species including seahorses and pipefish. A research team recently detected eelgrass wasting disease at roughly 30 sites along a 1,700 mile coastline spanning the West of Northern America.
Seagrass wasting disease is caused by the organism Labyrinthula zosterae and was confirmed through molecular diagnostics. The disease is associated with above average water temperatures, demonstrating the negative effect climate change has on the plant.
The AI system, named Eelgrass Lesion Image Segmentation Application (EeLISA) led by Rappazzo and Gomes, can analyse thousands of images of seagrass leaves at an extremely quick rate (5000x that of human expert) and so distinguishes diseased tissue from healthy tissue. Furthermore, like most artificial intelligence, the technology “gets smarter” with the more information fed.
Rappazzo went on to say that “If you give the same eelgrass scan to four different people to label, they’ll all give variable measurements of disease. You have all this variation, but with EeLISA, it’s not only faster but it’s consistently labelled.”
The project involved a network of 32 field sites along the Pacific cost allowing a high degree of variability in the sites tested. This allowed for the study of seagrass wasting disease in different climates and environments.
The AI enabled research revealed that warm water anomalies were the main driver of wasting disease. In completing the decade of technology development, the team can now monitor outbreaks at a large spatial scale. Eelgrass is an essential marine habitat and critical link in the chain of survival for fishes including salmon or herring.
👖Mysterious Genes
Scientists unravel the mystery of genes involved in brain development…
A research team from Bath University have helped in the understanding of precise gene workings. Specifically a type of gene that is not responsible for coding proteins.
The mechanism by which genes coding for a subset of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) interact with neighbouring genes to regulate the development and function of essential nerve cells has been uncovered.
Despite their key role on genes coding for lncRNA in the genome, the segments of DNA were previously thought as junk due to the fact that the information contained within them is not linked to protein production. This new research has shown that some of these IncRNAs are anything but scrap. They may play a key role in restoring physical function in people who have suffered serious nerve damage.
This new research describes the regulatory pathway involved in controlling the levels of one of these gene pairs. Furthermore, that the location and quantity within the genome needs to be carefully coordinated.
Dr Keith Vance, lead author of the study said “we previously defined one of the most profound functions for lncRNA in the brain and our new study identifies an important signalling pathway that acts to coordinate the expression of this lncRNA and the key protein coding gene that it is paired with”.
The new research increases the understanding of how nerve cells are produced. Regenerative medicine is one application of the study and with further research a better understanding of how lncRNA genes operate in the brain could be an important development. Dr Vance added that “This knowledge could be important for scientists looking for ways to replace defective neurons and restore nerve function – for instance in people who have had strokes.”
🐠Ears from Fish Gills
Fossils show ear origins - fish gills…
The middle ear is an air-filled membrane lined space located between the ear canal and the Eustachian tube, cochlea and auditory nerve. The air is pressurised with the eardrum separating this space from the ear canal. The human middle ear houses three tiny, vibrating bones and is key to transporting sound vibrations to the inner ear. In the inner ear they become nerve impulses that allow us to hear.
New evidence proves that the human middle ear evolved from the spiracle of fishes. Researchers previously thought that early vertebrates possessed a complete spiracular gill and so searched between the mandibular and hyoid arches of early vertebrates.
Now, scientists have found clues to this mystery from armoured galeaspid fossils in china. Professor GAI Zhikun, first author of the study found over the last 20 years, a 438 million year old Shuyu 3D Braincase fossil as well as the the first 419 million year old galeaspid fossil completely preserved with gill filaments in the first branchial chamber.
Almost all details of the cranial anatomy of the Shuyu brain were revealed in its fingernail sized skull. These included the five divisions of the brain, sensory organs, the blood vessel passages as well as the cranial nerve.
"Many important structures of human beings can be traced back to our fish ancestors, such as our teeth, jaws, middle ears, etc. The main task of palaeontologists is to find the important missing links in the evolutionary chain from fish to humans. Shuyu has been regarded as a key missing link as important as Archaeopteryx, Ichthyostega and Tiktaalik," said ZHU Min, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Spiracles are external respiratory openings. The spiracle was a small hole behind the eyes that open to the mouth in some fishes. In sharks and all rays, the spiracle is responsible for the intake of water before being expelled by gills. Fish spiracles were eventually replaced in most non-fish species as they evolved to use their noses and mouths. In early tetrapod’s the spiracle evolved into the ear of modern tetra pods before becoming the hearing canal used for transmitting sound.
"Our finding bridges the entire history of the spiracular slit, bringing together recent discoveries from the gill pouches of fossil jawless vertebrates, via the spiracles of the earliest jawed vertebrates, to the middle ears of the first tetrapods, which tells this extraordinary evolutionary story," said Prof. Per E. Ahlberg from Uppsala University and academician of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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Reference List
Content may be adapted and edited for style and length.
🤖AI and Eelgrass
Aoki, L., Rappazzo, B., Beatty, D., Domke, L., Eckert, G., Eisenlord, M., Graham, O., Harper, L., Hawthorne, T., Hessing‐Lewis, M., Hovel, K., Monteith, Z., Mueller, R., Olson, A., Prentice, C., Stachowicz, J., Tomas, F., Yang, B., Duffy, J., Gomes, C. and Harvell, C., 2022. Disease surveillance by artificial intelligence links eelgrass wasting disease to ocean warming across latitudes. Limnology and Oceanography,.
News Press Release: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/06/ai-reveals-scale-eelgrass-vulnerability-warming-disease
👖Mysterious Genes
Pavlaki, I., Shapiro, M., Pisignano, G., Jones, S., Telenius, J., Muñoz-Descalzo, S., Williams, R., Hughes, J. and Vance, K., 2022. Chromatin interaction maps identify Wnt responsive cis-regulatory elements coordinating Paupar-Pax6 expression in neuronal cells. PLOS Genetics, 18(6), p.e1010230.
News Press Release: https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/scientists-unravel-the-mystery-of-genes-that-are-key-to-brain-development/
🐠Ears from Fish Gills
Gai, Z., Zhu, M., Ahlberg, P. and Donoghue, P., 2022. The Evolution of the Spiracular Region From Jawless Fishes to Tetrapods. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 10.
News Press Release: https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/research_news/life/202206/t20220614_306500.shtml