[cap-talk] Bee Eyes

[Sam Mason]

On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 01:44:25AM -0500, Steve Witham wrote:
> "But when researchers in Walter Gehring's lab isolated the *eyeless*
> gene (named because of the loss of eyes in flies mutant for the gene),
> they discovered that the fly gene was the counterpart of a gene already
> known in humans...

I went to a seminar by him last week; very interesting and good talker.
Most notable thing mentioned in my mind is when you knock on the above
"eyeless" gene (explain in somewhat more detail in his talk) you end
up taking out most of the fly's brain brain as well, yet the rest of
the nervous system remains.  The hypothesis being that the eye evolved
before the brain and it was only when we had reasonable amounts of data
(from the eye) was it worth evolving a brain to reason with the data.


  Sam