Post #219756 by MachTiki on Thu, Mar 9, 2006 2:49 PM

From the "San Diego Union Tribune" March 8, 2006:

The unloved but now less lonely lamprey

*Pity the poor lamprey, an eellike, parasitic fish that latches onto larger fish and marine mammals using a mouthful of sharp, toothy structures, then proceeds to suck out blood and bodily tissues.

Picture a leech longer than your forearm, with a mouth that looks like a giant rasp. That's a lamprey.

Biologists had long thought the lamprey – along with its also jawless cousin, the hagfish – were distinctly ancient and distant creatures, that they had taken a different evolutionary road from other animals with backbones.

But scientists at the University of Florida say they've identified a protein essential to constructing lamprey cartilage. It's collagen, the same molecule found in all vertebrates with backbones and jaws, including humans.

“It was thought collagen was a relatively recent invention in vertebrate evolution that unites us with reptiles, amphibians, sharks and bony fishes, while the lamprey skeleton was based on quite different proteins,” said Martin Cole, a developmental biologist. “Knowing that lampreys also use collagen to build their skeletons makes sense. Lampreys and jawed vertebrates inherited the same genetic program for skeletal development from our common ancestor.”

Put another way, this news means lampreys aren't quite as different from people as we once thought. Or maybe hoped.*

Looks like they may be going mainstream.