Scientists uncover oxygen-loving ancestor of all complex life - Science Daily

Underwater photo of one of the species studied, Pajaudina atlantica, from La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. Credit: Hana Jurikova New research from the University of St Andrews has shed light on the evolution of an important yet thus far poorly understood group of marine invertebrate animals—brachiopods. The work, published in Science Advances, presents the first comprehensive phylogenomic analysis of all five extant brachiopod orders and related lineages.

It’s unsurprising that cutting off your brain’s access to the oxygen it needs to run its routine processes can significantly affect it. That’s especially true for freedivers, people who hold their breath for minutes at a time as they try to swim as deep into the ocean as humanly possible. Normally, starving your brain leads straight to rapid neuron death, seizures, and catastrophic memory impairment, mostly because the hippocampus takes the first hit when oxygen dries up. Yet, according to a bioRxiv study led by neuroscientist Julia Micaux of the University of Paris-Saclay, free divers who hold their breath for extended stretches somehow don’t suffer the kind of major brain meltdown you’d expect.

Gomez's Hamburger System. This artist's impression of the Gomez's Hamburger system shows the stacked layers of gas and dust as they rotate around a young star. ALMA observations reveal a direct view of its vertical structure at millimeter wavelengths, allowing astronomers to map the location of the millimeter-sized dust grains and several different gas-phase molecules, which have arranged themselves into distinct levels. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/P. Vosteen. Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) were surprised to discover the earliest phases of giant planet formation between the dense layers of gas and dust in the "Gomez's Hamburger" system, referred to as GoHam.