Researchers are using sea urchins to try and find cures for diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and infertility. They can find cures for these diseases in sea urchins because we both have a common ancestor: Cristina Calestani sea urchin and humans share more than 7,000 genes with us so scientists can experiment on them to unlock the secrets of some human diseases previously thought incurable. In fact, there are a lot of genes in the sea urchin involving Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, muscular dystrophy and many other cancer-related genes. And infertility is another disease that the sea urchin can unravel mainly because it can lay 20,000,000 eggs in a lifetime. Another amazing fact is sea urchins don't have eyes, ears or a nose, but they have the genes humans have for vision, hearing and smelling. So as you can see sea urchins have a lot in common with us and can provide many clues to cures for various diseases.
Very interesting. What connections did you make to this article? Why did you choose it?
ReplyDeleteCool, but i dont understand it so much. Why does it matter if you have the same ancestor.
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