According to new research, butterflies and moths share “blocks” of DNA that are more than 200 million years old. Scientists from the Universities of Exeter (UK), Lübeck (Germany) and Iwate (Japan) devised a tool to compare the chromosomes (DNA molecules) of different butterflies and moths.
They found blocks of chromosomes that exist in all moth and butterfly species, and also in Trichoptera – aquatic caddisflies that shared a common ancestor with moths and butterflies some 230 million years ago. Moths and butterflies (collectively called Lepidoptera) have widely varying numbers of chromosomes – from 30 to 300 – but the study’s findings show remarkable evidence of shared blocks of homology (similar structure) going back through time.
“DNA is compacted into individual particles or chromosomes that form the basic units of inheritance,” said Professor Richard ffrench-Constant, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall. “If genes are on the same ‘string’, or chromosome, they tend to be inherited together and are therefore ‘linked’.
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