Abstract
Suppose we are talking about pain. Humans feel pain, but what about a fly or an octopus? How similar are our nociceptive systems? And what about the reproductive system? Humans have two sex chromosomes, but what about other animals? How similar is the number of chromosomes throughout the entire animal kingdom? The two systems are very different in appearance but conserved, in part, throughout evolution. Although different, the essential mechanisms for life overlap and exhibit common patterns between species beyond chance. Adapt or die, in the purest Darwinian style.
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Notes
- 1.
Cnidarians and ctenophores are two of the oldest living groups of animals and, although they are made up of multiple species, all of them have a gastrovascular cavity, often branched, consisting of the gastric cavity itself or central corridor and an orifice or opening that acts as both mouth and anus, often surrounded by tentacles. Examples of cnidarians are jellyfish and sea anemones.
- 2.
The Qutenza®skin patch is a dressing impregnated with capsaicin 8%, the active substance in hot peppers. It binds to TRPV1 receptors, which are present exclusively in sensitive neurons, such as nociceptive neurons, which transmit noxious information. At first, capsaicin promotes an intense release of nociceptive substances (mainly substance P). However, this empties the nerve terminals of these nociceptive substances leaving the neuron silenced and unable to signal until no more substance P is synthesized. This produces a neuronal desensitization of these fibers, which no longer send information to the brain, causing the pain to cease.
- 3.
An animal model is used to study the functioning of a biological mechanism or a disease because, due to a series of specific characteristics, aspects of the pathology found in humans can be easily extrapolated. Thus, for example, pigs have a heart and a female reproductive system very similar to that of people, so that they can serve as training and thus prevent recent medical graduates from facing a cardiac catheterization or ovarian surgery without previous experience. However, it should be noted that, when trying to study the effect of a potentially useful drug for the treatment of a disease, a major difficulty is that molecules that are active in vitro (in cell cultures or in preparations with isolated tissues from animals) or in vivo, in the animal itself, have little chance of showing a similar absorption, therapeutic, and adverse effects profile in subsequent studies in humans. We are anatomically and physiologically different and, although many products end up working, a lot of time and resources are inevitably wasted studying other compounds that, in the end, will be useless to society.
- 4.
Meiosis is a specialized type of division whose aim is to produce gametes and create genetic variability in all populations of the planet; it is very important for evolution, and to preserve all those genetic modifications that improve a species and increase its chances of survival in this changing world. It consists of two consecutive divisions (without DNA replication in between), which reduces the genetic material of the cells by half and therefore we start from diploid cells (2n) and when producing gametes we obtain haploid cells (n).
- 5.
Sex chromosomes are chromosomes involved in determining the sex of the individual as male or female. The remaining chromosomes, called autosomal chromosomes, contain most of the genetic information of the individual, but are not critical in determining individual’s sex.
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M. Garcia, M., Martín Ruiz, M. (2024). Evolution, Sex and Pain. Multiple Faces of the Dice. In: M. Garcia, M. (eds) Tales of Discovery. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47620-4_10
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