A BLIND centipede which lives below the pebbles and sand on a Sutherland beach has opened the door to scientists' understanding of the genetic origins of all creepy crawlies on the planet.
Experts say this vitally important development could be key to a new perspective on the genetic past of the whole animal kingdom and even to a better understanding of how the human body reacts differently between the hours of daylight and darkness.
Study of the Strigamia maritima has allowed a team to reconstruct many features of the genetic make-up of the original ancestral arthropod 550 million years ago. Its descendents include insects (flies, beetles and wasps), crustaceans (crabs and lobsters), chelicerates (spiders and mites) and myriapods (centipedes and millipedes).
The researchers from Cambridge University, headed by Professor of Zoology Michael Akam, have been making the long trip up to Brora on the east coast of Sutherland for a decade to lie on their stomachs on the beach, digging under the pebbles around the tide line to hunt out their favourite centipede.
These secretive animals have long been blind, in connection with their sub-surface lifestyle which the scientists say makes the species an ideal candidate for obtaining the first genome sequence from a myriapod. Lead co-author of the report, Dr David Ferrier of University of St Andrews' Scottish Oceans Institute, said: "This genome of Strigamia has proved to be particularly valuable in deducing the content of important gene families in the ancestral arthropod; this ancestor then being the starting point for the evolution of the huge diversity of arthropods that we currently see today.
"There has been a high turnover in arthropod gene and genome organisation, with lots of rearrangements and plenty of gene losses during the evolution of animals like the insects."
But he said Strigamia allowed scientists to delve deeper into animal evolution, back to a group which included our human forebears. "We can see similarities in the organisation of this centipede genome to that in our own genome," he said, adding that these similarities could not be seen in the popular "work-horse" of geneticists, the fruit fly.
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