Back to HN Ancient genome duplications laid the foundations of complex brainsby hhs | 37 points | 3 comments | 2026-06-13 17:54:37 Central Open Source Link | Read Source Here Open on Hacker News Commentscadamsdotcom
Very cool.The article doesn't seem to mention it, but I'd
be curious to know if this or similar duplication
contributes to how many organisms - including humans -
display symmetry and use it as a sign of genetic
fitness.Eg. Humans. Lots kv studies show people finding
symmetrical faces attractive.Maybe symmetry is the body's
way of showing off how good it is at producing the same
outcome twice - and attraction comes from the idea that
that body could do it for your offspring too.
| > adrian_b
No, it does not have any connection with symmetry
whatsoever.Genome duplication has happened in many
animal groups. Wherever it happens, it enables the
descendants to evolve into having bodies that are
bigger and more complex, because each ancestral gene
is replaced by multiple copies and then each copy
evolves differently, becoming able to accomplish
additional functions than in the ancestors.Without a
genome duplication, accumulating a similar number of
genetic innovations would require a much longer
time.Another example besides the vertebrates is that
the ancestor of spiders and scorpions also passed
through a genome duplication event.In animals, the
genome duplications are very rare events, because the
development of animal embryos is very complicated and
after a genome duplication the embryos will usually
fail to develop correctly and they would die.On the
other hand, in plants genome duplications and also
hybridizations when a genome is doubled by combining
together 2 genomes of some closely related plants, are
very frequent.Some of the most important crops have
genomes that have been multiplied, either from the
same species or by hybridization, i.e. which are
called tetraploid or hexaploid, to mark the fact that
they are doubled or tripled in comparison with the
original diploid genomes. In cultivated plants, this
genome multiplication has resulted in a higher
productivity in comparison with their wild ancestors.
| > PowerElectronix
I don't think that has much to do. Symmetry is very
handy in several fronts, you can code an organism
geometry more easily, that same organism has an easier
time learning how to navigate environments and another
organism of the same species has an easier time
detecting defects on it while weighing potential
mating.
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