"The controlled expression of one cellular feature -- the cilium -- was likely critical during early animal evolution. Two key transcription factors, RFX and FoxJ1, coordinate ciliogenesis in animals but are absent from the genomes of most other ciliated eukaryotes, raising the question of how the transcriptional regulation of ciliogenesis has evolved."
@cyrilpedia hey forgive me, I know nothing of your science, but permit me to take a shot in the dark here.
There are predatory cells right? I would think the antenna began evolving when the first multicellular organisms appeared. I think the first multicellular organisms were actually single celled organisms that cohabitated well. This makes a disadvantage to single celled organisms. So single celled organisms that have protrusions could defend defend better because hey, they're like bumpers. Somewhere in the middle of this single vs. multi cell war. That wasn't enough. But if 2 single celled organisms that could detect each other and behave like a multicellular organism, the balance is finally there. 1 eternity later.. multicellular organisms adapt this too. To counter this, the protrusions on the single celled organisms are not only sensory but predatory. Balance achieved again. Up till here I think they were mainly parasitic. But once they got the ability to stab consume using a sensor, this became a 2 way street. They could also inject. This provides a doorway to alternative replication. What happens when the old way is less affective? It dies off. The transcription was there once upon a time. Not needed anymore. However with complex animals, it's still a good way to go as they live longer as a community and generally protected by thick outer membranes.
Ok I'm done, you can laugh at me now for writing so much on something, I have a highschool education 20 years ago on. But I like stretching my brain in directions outside of tech.
@skanman If you're interested in the general framework, Dr King has a great talk on youtube
@cyrilpedia oooh I seeeee! I wrote my idea all wrong too. I can explain it better with an analogy. As a programmer, I'm limited by my hardware in 2 ways. What I can program for or program on. While the hardware evolves dramatically, the method usually stays the same. Thus, the act of programming has stayed the same. No reason for a change in manufacturing. It's optimal, and peak. We've programmed the same way since the inception of computers. Almost ;-). Right after the inception of computers, manufacturing code went through massive drastic changes. Code was once upon a time manually punched into sheets of cardboard to be fed into the machine. The process of programming rapidly evolved into the process it is today, not slowly, but quickly then optimized. What triggered the change in manufacturing though was the hardware environmental limitations evolved, creating more dynamic efficient ways of programming(replication). The evolution of the cells manufacturing process reached it's peak due to its chemical(hardware) and environmental limitations. But 4 billion years ago, when life originally has estimated to have formed, environmental conditions weren't as diverse as now, but the earth cooled off to a median balance and has stayed in that median balance the majority of its existence. Thus manufacturing has stayed the same, but the original causality of it's evolution makes perfect sense, and why it hasn't changed.
Ironically I'm pretty sure cell manufacturing and replication is going to evolve again in the next 100 years, but by force. We've already got carbon nanotubes, quantum motors, optical tweezers, we're beginning to assemble molecules manually. I'm pretty sure we'll be able to transcode DNA in realtime eventually, and have the hardware to make / repair / copy cells. Sounds like a cure for cancer, and death.
What a fun time to be alive. I'll die before I learn everything I want to learn.
@skanman Hi @skanman, first thing I wanted to say is, this is not my science, it's a quote from work done in Nicole King's lab (the link in the toot). There are definitely predatory cells, and even interesting models that predation at the cellular level might have led to "stripping of parts" and more complex cells. An important part of the story is that cilia have multiple functions, not just sensory (as an "antenna") but also in motility, cell division etc The key thing about evolutionary cell biology is that the transcriptional network, meaning the network of different genes that interact in the development (and functioning) of a structure like cilia is stable or changes slowly - to put it another way, when evolution repurposes something, it keeps the "manufacturing" process largely intact.