such as "Introduction", "Conclusion"..etc
A quest to gain a more complete picture of color vision evolution has
led Biodesign Institute researcher Brian Verrelli to an up-close,
genetic encounter with one of the world's most rare and bizarre-looking
Verrelli and his ASU team have performed the first
sweeping study of color vision in the aye-aye (pronounced "eye-eye"), a
bushy-tailed, Madagascar native primate with a unique combination of
physical features including extremely large eyes and ears, and
elongated fingers for reaching hard to access insects and other foods.
Verrelli, lead author George Perry, and collaborator Robert Martin's
results, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, have
led to some surprising conclusions on how this nocturnal primate may
have retained color vision function.
Verrelli's group focuses on color vision to better understand genetic
variation between human and other primate populations and the truly big
evolutionary questions as to what makes us human. "At least within
humans and some other primates, we know that there are three different
genes responsible for color vision," said Verrelli. The genes, called
opsins, come in three forms that shape our color vision palette, one
for blue, another for green, and a third for red.
that very interesting is that the green and red are found on the X
chromosome [sex chromosome], and it is the manipulation of those two
genes alone which is related to color blindness for eight to ten
percent of the male population," explains Verrelli. In a 2004 study in
the American Journal of Human Genetics by Verrelli and collaborator
Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Maryland, they suggested that
natural genetic selection has provided women with a frequent ability to
better discriminate between colors than men.
"These three genes
may explain all the variation that we might see across human
populations in color vision," said Verrelli. "But how did our range of
color vision variation come to be in the first place""
trace back the evolution of color vision, Verrelli's collaborator Perry
turned to the endangered aye-aye, a primate representative of lemurs.
These primates split from other groups including humans, apes, and
monkeys more than sixty million years ago, and are thought to be in
some ways representative of the early primates that lived at that time.
"We chose the aye-aye specifically because it has a very interesting
behavior in that it is fully nocturnal, and so, it raises an obvious
and straightforward question: If you are an animal that lives at night,
do you need color vision""
In a simple case of 'use it or lose
it,' the prevailing theory suggested that nocturnal primates cannot use
color vision to see, and so the genes that they have for color vision
accumulated mutations and degraded over evolutionary time.
a practical standpoint, studying color vision in the aye-aye proved to
be a daunting endeavor. Since the aye-aye is an endangered species,
obtaining DNA samples in the wild was not possible. The group turned to
a few rare international research institutions and colleagues that have
aye-ayes to obtain DNA samples for their study.
In all total,
they obtained samples from eight aye-ayes for their study. It took a
year and a half to analyze the samples, since Perry and Verrelli had to
invent the methodology to perform the first wide-range genetic analysis
on the aye-aye. "From a conservation, population and functional
viewpoint, it was the first study of its kind," said Verrelli.
results his team found were so startling that they had to recheck them
twice. "When examining these genes in the aye-aye, we realized that
they are not degrading," said Verrelli. "In fact, for the green opsin
gene, we did not find a single mutation in it. The opsin genes look to
be absolutely fully functional, which is completely counter to how we
had believed color vision evolved in nocturnal mammals."
authors plan to collaborate with others to perform behavioral studies
to see if aye-ayes can respond to colors and further molecular studies
to identify the exact color absorption by the opsin proteins to see how
this may differ from other primates that are not nocturnal.
study has not only proved important to understanding color vision
evolution, but also has shown the value of examining the dazzling
diversity of life, especially in endangered species.
only need to focus on organisms that are related to us and are common,
but also organisms that are uncommon and endangered, for there may be
behaviors and physical features that, once they are lost, we may never
Arizona State University. September 2007.
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