Sunday, 23 March 2014

Sea Anemones Are Half-Plant, Half-Animal, Gene Study Finds


By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer | March 20, 2014 02:43pm ET

The sea anemone is an oddball: half-plant and half-animal, at least when it comes to its genetic code, new research suggests.

The sea creature's genes look more like those of animals, but the regulatory code that determines whether those genes are expressed resembles that in plants, according to a study published Tuesday (March 18) in the journal Genome Research.

What's more, the complicated network of gene interactions found in the simple sea anemone resembles that found in widely divergent, more complex animals. 

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