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Shedding New Light on Brain Evolution,
Wellcome Trust Studies Role of Proteins

[June 12, 2008]

Using proteomic and genomic technologies, researchers studied about 600 proteins found in mammalian synapses and learned that about half of them are also found in invertebrate synapses, while one-quarter are also found in single-cell organisms that don’t have brains. The findings led them to hypothesize that mammalian synapses originated from a proto-synapse found in single-cell animals, and that during the course of evolution this proto-synapse added more synapses.

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