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Science 335 (6070): 805-806

Copyright © 2012 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

A Cold Editor Makes the Adaptation

Marie Öhman

Although organisms have evolved to live in diverse conditions, closely related species often inhabit vastly different environments. This is particularly true for aquatic animals such as squid and octopus, which are common in tropical waters but are also found at the poles. These cephalopods have highly developed nervous systems, and one challenging question is how temperature-sensitive neuronal synaptic transmission has adapted to function at a near-freezing temperature. On page 848 of this issue, Garrett and Rosenthal (1) show that RNA editing rather than changes in the genome sequence enable potassium (K+) channels in octopus to function at different temperatures.

Department of Molecular Biology and Functional Genomics, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.

E-mail: marie.ohman{at}molbio.su.se

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