We Are The Smartest Human Beings Ever: Who is 2nd Octopus
Houston, TX ( AP ) -- We Are The Smartest Human Being Ever. Barron’s Medical Journal has discovered we have a wonderful amount of intelligence going for us in 2015. One of the most significant sciences finding in the last twenty years is the study of Genetics and Genomics. Let’s start by providing a understanding of Genetics. Genetics is the branch of science concerned with genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms. It seeks to understand the process of trait inheritance from parents to offspring, including the molecular structure and function of genes, gene behavior
in the context of a cell or organism. Genomics is the study of the full genetic complement of an organism (the genome). It employs recombinant DNA, DNA sequencing methods, and bioinformatics to sequence, assemble, and analyse the structure and function of genomes. The Breaking new in the science communities is, the octopus genome offers clues to how the creatures evolved intelligence to rival the craftiest vertebrates.
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A octopus genome turned out to be almost as large as a human’s and to contain a greater number of protein-coding genes — some 33,000, 
compared with fewer than 25,000 in Homo sapiens. The octopus seems almost like an alien species. It’s spineless. It has 3 hearts. It has 8 arms lined with suckers. It can change color, texture, and shape to camouflage itself. It can climb walls and open jars. And its nervous system contains nearly half a billion neurons, more than 6 times the number in a mouse brain.
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This excess results mostly from the expansion of a few specific gene families, Ragsdale says. One of the most remarkable gene groups is the protocadherins, which regulate the development of neurons and the short-range interactions between them. The octopus has 168 of these genes — more than twice as many as mammals. This resonates with the creature’s unusually large brain and the organ’s even-stranger anatomy. 
Of the octopus's half a billion neurons — six times the number in a mouse — two-thirds spill out from its head through its arms, without the involvement of long-range fibres such as those in vertebrate spinal cords. The independent computing power of the arms, which can execute cognitive tasks even when dismembered, have made octopuses an object of study for neurobiologists such as Hochner and for roboticists who are collaborating on the development of soft, flexible robots.
The researchers found that the genome of the common California two-spot octopus was almost as large as a human’s genome (2.7 billion base pairs compared to 3 billion base pairs, respectively). But they estimated that it contains over 33,000 protein-coding genes—considerably more than the approximately 20,500 found in humans.
The octopus is a member of the cephalopod class, a group that includes squid and cuttlefish. The scientists found that the octopus has hundreds of genes present in cephalopods that haven’t been detected in other animals.
Many of these genes are highly expressed (turned on) in specialized structures, such as the skin, the suckers, and the nervous system. For example, they found 6 genes for reflectins, which play a role in rapid, reversible changes in iridescence.
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The team found a greatly expanded number of genes in 2 specific groups, or families, which were previously thought to only be enlarged in vertebrates. They noted 168 protocadherin genes, more than twice as many as humans. These genes regulate nervous system development and organization. The researchers also found nearly 1,800 genes from a group known as zinc-finger transcription factors.
This is one of
the largest groups of genes discovered to date in any animal. These genes, which code for proteins that regulate the activities of other genes, are mainly expressed in embryonic and nervous tissues, and are thought to play a role in brain development.
Nearly half of the octopus genome is composed of elements known as transposons—small pieces of DNA that can move from one location in the genome to another. They originally were referred to as “jumping genes.” A notable feature of the octopus genome is that it seems to have expanded largely through transposons moving around and reorganizing the genome.
A gene family that is involved in development, the zinc-finger transcription factors, is also highly expanded in octopuses. At around 1,800 genes, it is the second-largest gene family to be discovered in an animal, after the elephant’s 2,000 olfactory-receptor genes. The team estimates the O. bimaculoides genome is 2.7 billion base-pairs in size, with numerous long stretches of repeated sequences. They identified more than 33,000 protein-coding genes, placing the octopus genome at slightly smaller in size, but with more genes, than a human genome. The large size of the octopus genome was initially attributed to whole genome duplication events during evolution, which can lead to increased genomic diversity and complexity. This phenomenon has occurred twice in ancestral vertebrates, for example. However, Ragsdale and his colleagues found no evidence of duplication's.
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Instead, the evolution of the octopus genome was likely driven by the expansion of a few specific gene families, widespread genome shuffling and the appearance of novel genes.
The most notable expansion was in the protocadherins, a family of genes that regulate neuronal development and short-range interactions between neurons. The octopus genome contains 168 protocadherin genes - 10 times more than other invertebrates and more than twice as many as mammals. It was previously thought that only vertebrates possessed numerous and diverse protocadherin genes. The research team hypothesized that because cephalopod neurons lack myelin and function poorly over long distances, protocadherins were central to the evolution of a nervous system whose complexity depends on short-range interactions. The CephSeq Consortium and chair of its steering committee acknowledged that cephalopod researchers are at square one when it comes to this kind of genetic analysis, but the project will build momentum. “Once there’s a good assembly of one of the genomes, then the others will be much easier,” he said.
Ragsdale and Carrie Albertin, a PhD candidate in his lab, are working specifically on the genome forOctopus bimaculoides, a small, brown octopus found in the Pacific off the coast of California and Mexico. Their contribution to the project will be sequencing and assembling transcriptomes for the octopus, which will yield a complete set of mRNA, or the protein coding genes, expressed in target tissues. Albertin has isolated 19 different tissues from various embryonic stages, brain tissue and glands of the octopus, which will then be sequenced at the University of Chicago Genomics Facility, a shared, high-performance computing center on campus
