Anthropocentrism and biology

A recent The Scientist commentary on a recent paper (D. Dickinson, et al., “ A polarized epithelium organized by beta- and alpha-catenin predates cadherin and metazoan origins,” Science, 331: 1336-39, 2011) makes some wonderful points about the working and evolution of biological systems.

The first point relates to anthropocentrism: “Yet again it shows that something we thought was unique to animals turns out to not be quite so special,” evolutionary biologist Casey Dunn of Brown University, who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email to The Scientist.

Even more interesting is the second point, which relates to use of old components for new functions: “This shows that two groups of organisms that independently evolved multicellularity both used [the same] off-the-shelf tools for polarizing tissues,” Dunn added. “This drives home the notion that new genes are not needed for new organism features; existing genes can be used in new ways.”