Evidences of Evolution
The guiding question in this lab is, “How are whales related to other mammals?” Descent through modification is the central idea of biological evolution. Descent through modification is the passing on of traits from parent organisms to their offspring. Descent through modification is important in biology is because it shows that the common ancestor of all life on earth brought about the biodiversity we see today. It helps scientists study the evolutionary history of life on earth. The basic concept of descent through modification is that two species that more recently diverged from one another will share more genetic similarities than two species that diverged from each other further back. Thus, species that share more genetic
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The program used for this lab is UniProt. UniProt is an online database that can be used to examine the amino acid sequence for a protein found in all mammals. The protein examined in this lab is HBA (hemoglobin subunit alpha), which allows red blood cells to transport oxygen, hence hemoglobin. Then using the system mammals are selected at random. The mammals used in this lab are HBA_MACGI, an Eastern gray kangaroo; HBA_LEPWE, a Weddell seal; HBA_TRIIN, a Brazilian manatee; HBA_PHYCD, a sperm whale; and HBA_HIPAM, a hippopotamus. Then the HBA amino acid sequences are aligned and the number of similarities are used to produce a phylogenetic tree (Figure 1). In Figure 1 we can see that the sperm whale and hippopotamus share the most recent common ancestor. The kangaroo and the sperm whale share the furthest common ancestor. Table 1 shows the actual number of HBA amino acid similarities between the mammals individually compared to the sperm whale. Based on Table 1 we can say that the hippopotamus and the sperm whale share the most recent common ancestor with the highest similarity percentage of 85 percent, the same results given by the phylogenetic