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Using Evolution to Understand Our Nervous System
Jellyfish and related animals have nervous systems and even brains and it is rather humbling to realize that their nervous systems and brains work in very much the same way as our own. Their’s are obviously much simpler, with far fewer nerve cells and far fewer connections between those nerve cells – which is where our brain’s complexity comes from – but the basic mechanisms that determine how our brains function are very much the same as those in jellyfish.
Why is this? Because the molecules and mechanisms that allow our brains to function the way they do have evolved over many hundreds of millions of years and the starting point in that evolution was in the nervous system of something like a jellyfish. Thus, modern-day jellyfish give us a window into what the earliest nervous system might have looked like and how its component molecules functioned – the starting point in the long evolutionary history that molded our nervous system and brain. Only by knowing where our nervous system came from, in the evolutionary sense, can we truly understand why our brain and its myriad of molecules work the way they do.
What if… we could learn something about our own nervous system and brain through a better understanding of the jellyfish nervous system. We can, because some jellyfish species provide us with preparations where we can study in great detail the properties of single nerve cells and the connections between those nerve cells, called synapses. My lab is currently studying the synapses between the nerve cells that control swimming contractions in the Lion’s Mane jellyfish, Cyanea. Specifically, we are trying to identify the chemical that these nerve cells use to communicate with one another, what is called a neurotransmitter. The identity of that neurotransmitter and of the receptors that detect it will provide great insight into the properties of the “first” neurotransmitters and receptors and, thereby, help us understand why the neurotransmitter pathways in our own nervous systems function the way they do.
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Peter A. V. Anderson, Ph.D.
Professor of Physiology and Functional Genomics, Neuroscience and Biology
Dr. Peter Anderson graduated with a B.S. in zoology from St. Andrews University in Scotland with First Class Honours. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and did his postdoctoral research with Dr. George Mackie at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.
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