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This discovery was published in the PNAS journal. It showed that the tiny, less than ten celled parasite HenneguyaSalminicola lives on the muscles of Salmon.
New Delhi: The scientists have discovered the first ever animal that does not survive on oxygen.
This discovery was published in the PNAS journal. It showed that the tiny, less than ten celled parasite HenneguyaSalminicola lives on the muscles of Salmon.
“We show that a similar adaptation occurred in a member of the Myxozoa, a large group of microscopic parasitic animals that are closely related to jellyfish and hydroids. Using deep sequencing approaches supported by microscopic observations, we present evidence that an animal has lost its mitochondrial genome,” the journal wrote.
The findings by the scientists suggested that this HenneguyaSalminicola lost its mitochondrial genome. But it also lost all its nuclear genes that was involved in transcription and replication of the mitochondrial genome.
A mitochondria is the power house of a cell. Here oxygen is captured and this gas in turn makes energy for the cell. Absence of mitochondria indicates that this animal was not breathing oxygen and can live without oxygen.
This theory that all animals live by breathing oxygen was based on this fact that all animals are multicellular in structure. All these animals are highly developed organisms. These organisms evolved on Earth when the level of oxygen rose here. It was reported by the scientists.
This journal further highlighted that they noticed aerobic respiration in this animal. It is one of the most important metabolic pathways and it is not ubiquitous among animals.
“Although aerobic respiration is a hallmark of eukaryotes, a few unicellular lineages, growing in hypoxic environments, have secondarily lost this ability. In the absence of oxygen, the mitochondria of these organisms have lost all or parts of their genomes and evolved into mitochondria-related organelles (MROs),” it wrote.
