A blind fish living within a Mexican cave system's deep, enduring darkness still retains some ability to sense light.
This adaptation occurred despite the fish from each cave evolving from the same species with fully functioning eyes. This ancestral group still lives in the surface waters in the El Albra region of Mexico and some parts of the Southwestern US and parted ways with the cave dwellers between 10,000 and 10 million years ago, depending on the cave. Yet they are all still the same species that can interbreed.
They detected the activation of several molecular clock mechanisms when the cells were exposed to light, even in the cavefish cells., although the cavefish cells did not respond as strongly as those cells from surface fish. While there were some similarities between the fish from the different caves compared to their surface relatives, there were also differences that confirm their biological clock mutations each evolved independently of one another via different molecular mechanisms.
"We have provided proof that despite being blind, cells from the Mexican blind cavefish can detect light and entrain their clocks to a light/dark cycle," Steindal and colleaguesThe team hopes these cell cultures can teach us more about circadian rhythms and provide an easier way to study animal adaptations to dark environments.
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