2008/04/30

Ginés Morata closes the 'Darwin and Wallace' cycle with a talk entitled 'Genes, development and evolution'

On 29 April, Ginés Morata, a researcher at the Supreme Council for Scientific Research's Centre for Molecular Biology and the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), and winner of the Principe de Asturias Award 2007, closed the cycle of talks entitled 'Darwin and Wallace. 150 years discovering evolution' organised by CIC bioGUNE in collaboration with the British Council and the BBVA Foundation.

Under the title 'Genes, development and evolution', Morata explained how fossil records indicate that all animal groups existing today, the bilateralia groups, appeared suddenly 540 million years ago during the so-called 'Cambrian explosion'. In his opinion, this event constituted an evolutionary revolution, since it was accompanied by the disappearance of all previous wildlife. Morata stressed that the bilateralia groups are characterised by their bilateral symmetry, and by the fact that they have developed a morphologically diverse anatomic organisation, which distinguishes between the front, rear, dorsal and ventral parts of the body.

In his talk, Morata sustained that, in all likelihood, it was the appearance of the Hox complex 540 million years ago that provoked the 'Cambrian explosion'. The main characteristic of Hox genes is that they are activated in accordance with the position of the cells along the anteroposterior axis. Thus, they may have provided the genetic tool required to generated the body's morphological diversity.