>You might expect that as bodies became more complex, genomes did as well.
I bring this up in threads about diet/nutrition (and always get down voted).
But the idea is humans have about 20,000 protein coding genes and something as simple as wheat has estimated 150,000 to 334,000.
Where I get downvotes is the concept/hypothesis (not mine) that the explaination rests with the microbiome (which we have and something like wheat doesn’t).
I’d be interested in learning if complex creatures like jellyfish with simple genomes have a complex microbiome.
Reading this, I was reminded of Herb Simon's "Sciences of the Artifical," which makes the point that often complexity is the result of interaction with the environment. His example is of an ant walking through sand. The ant follows a complex path, even though its behavior is governed by simple rules. This seems like the same lesson, at another level.
This is a great discovery and opens up a good research area for experimentation. Coming from a math/computer background this result doesn't seem so surprising. Sometimes we can get complex results with very simple rules like cellular automata. It's the opposite result to having many genes change randomly with little resulting change in behaviour. Both can happen. We have yet to know if this was just by chance or if their was a more efficient mechanism in play.
Here's the obligatory link to Conways Game of Life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life
>Scholars in various fields, such as computer science, physics, biology, biochemistry, economics, mathematics, philosophy, and generative sciences have made use of the way that complex patterns can emerge from the implementation of the game's simple rules
Humans developing intelligence is a better example of complexity that arose from small differences in genome.
Jellyfish aren't that fancy, right? From what I understood they're like a stomach and some kind of "muscle" that make them go up or down. They've got some poisonous chemicals and other things, but plants do have this too. Jellyfish remind me of the 2-neuron "neural network" that can play flappy bird :-)
An interesting book was published by Brian Goodwin about 20 yesrs ago now - How the Leopard Changed it spots.
Some people thought of it as an attack on natural selection, but it really wasn't. It was a fascinating look at how the inherent properties of matter could lead to patterns (such as spiral arrangement of leaves or zebra stripes) without intervention from natural selection
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Leopard-Changed-Its-Spots/dp/07...