A group of 33 scientists and authors, who've authored the journal article "Cause of Cambrian Explosion - Terrestrial or Cosmic" published in the March issue of the scientific peer-reviewed journal "Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, suggests octopuses are likely of extraterrestrial origin. Their conclusion that octopuses likely have an extraterrestrial origin is reached in part on the basis of the octopuses' particular ability to routinely edit their RNA sequences for adapting to their environment.
According to these 33 scientists and authors of the "Cause of Cambrian Explosion - Terrestrial or Cosmic",
"Evidence of the role of extraterrestrial viruses in affecting terrestrial evolution has recently been plausibly implied in the gene and transciptome sequencing of Cephalopods. The genome of the Octopus shows a staggering level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes more than is present in
Homo Sapiens.
Octopus belongs to the coleoid sub-class of molluscs (Cephalopods) that have an evolutionary history that stretches back over 500 million years, although Cephalopod phylogenetics is highly inconsistent and confusing.
Fig. 5. The evolution from squid to octopus is compatible with a suite of genes inserted by extraterrestrial viruses. An alternative extraterrestrial scenario discuused is that a population of
cryopreserved octopus embryos soft-landed
en mass from space 275 million years ago.
However consistent with this conclusion are the recent RNA editing data on the somatic RNA diversification mechanisms in the behaviourally sophisticated Cephalopods such as Octopus. These data demonstrate extensive evolutionary conserved
adenosine to
inosine (A-to-I) mRNA editing sites in almost every single protein-coding gene in the behaviorally complex coleoid Cephalopods (Octopus in particular),
but not in nautilus.
This enormous qualitative difference in Cephalopod protein recoding A-to-I mRNA editing compared to nautilus and other invertebrate and vertebrate animals is striking. Thus in transcriptome-wide screens only 1–3% of
Drosophila and human protein coding mRNAs harbour an A-to-I recoding site; and there only about 25 human mRNA messages which contain a conserved A-to-I recoding site across mammals. In
Drosophila lineages there are about 65 conserved A-sites in protein coding genes and only a few identified in
C. elegans which support the hypothesis that A-to-I RNA editing recoding is mostly either neutral, detrimental, or rarely adaptive,
Yet in Squid and particularly Octopus it is the norm, with almost every protein coding gene having an evolutionary conserved A-to-I mRNA editing site
isoform, resulting in a nonsynonymous amino acid change.
This is a virtual qualitative jump in molecular genetic strategy in a supposed smooth and incremental evolutionary lineage - a type of sudden “great leap forward”. Unless all the new genes expressed in the squid/octopus lineages arose from simple mutations of existing genes in either the squid or in other organisms sharing the same habitat, there is surely no way by which this large qualitative transition in A-to-I mRNA editing can be explained by conventional neo-Darwinian processes, even if
horizontal gene transfer is allowed. One plausible explanation, in our view, is that the new genes are likely new extraterrestrial imports to Earth - most plausibly as an already coherent group of functioning genes within (say)
cryopreserved and matrix protected fertilized Octopus eggs.
Thus the possibility that cryopreserved Squid and/or Octopus eggs, arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted (below) as that would be a parsimonious cosmic explanation for the Octopus' sudden emergence on Earth ca. 270 million years ago. Indeed this principle applies to the sudden appearance in the fossil record of pretty well all major life forms, covered in the prescient concept of “punctuated equilibrium” by Eldridge and Gould advanced in the early 1970s; and see the conceptual cartoon of
Fig. 6. Therefore, similar living features like this “as if the genes were derived from some type of pre-existence" apply to many other biological ensembles when closely examined. One little known yet cogent example is the response and resistance of the eye structures of the
Drosophila fruit fly to normally lethally damaging UV radiation at 2537 Å, given that this wavelength does not penetrate the ozone layer and is thus not evident as a Darwinian selective factor at the surface of the Earth. Many of these “unearthly” properties of organisms can be plausibly explained if we admit the enlarged cosmic biosphere that is indicated by modern astronomical research – discoveries of exoplanets already discussed. The average distance between habitable planets in our galaxy now to be reckoned in light years – typically 5 light years Virion/gene exchanges thus appear to be inevitable over such short cosmic distances. The many features of biology that are not optimised to local conditions on the Earth may be readily understood in this wider perspective.
Given that the complex sets of new genes in the Octopus may have not come solely from horizontal gene transfers or simple random mutations of existing genes or by simple duplicative expansions, it is then logical to surmise, given our current knowledge of the biology of comets and their debris, the new genes and their viral drivers most likely came from space. However, it is also clear that to accept such a proposition also requires that we diminish the role for highly localised Darwinian evolution on Earth which is likely to be strongly resisted by traditional biologists. That should not, of course, be of concern as the focus of our attention, for general evolutionary molecular processes, now shifts to the Cosmos and beyond our immediate solar system. This evidence provides for, and allows the study of, Cosmic
Gene Pools – and these are capable of driving, and, dare we say, controlling and thus steering biological evolution here on Earth (via Darwinian and non-Darwinian adaptation mechanisms). The main effect of terrestrial Darwinian evolution is to act on these new cosmic-derived genes and fine-tune them by further somatic and
germline Lamarckian gene feedback and haplotype-block shuffling mechanisms to fit the environment and also the recipient organism. Indeed it has been shown that viral footprints are evident in human brain tissue which seem to mark important steps that led up to the present human condition."
