When Charles Darwin first proposed the idea that all new species descend from an ancestor, he performed an exhaustive amount of research to provide as much evidence as possible. Today, the major pieces of evidence for this theory can be broken down into the fossil record, embryology, comparative anatomy, and molecular biology.
Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species in 1859. Of the different types of evidence that you have examined, which do you think he relied upon the most, and why?
Cytochrome c is a protein found in mitochondria. It is used in the study of evolutionary relationships because most animals have this protein. Cytochrome c is made of 104 amino acids joined together.Below is a list of the amino acids in part of a cytochrome protein molecule for 9 different animals. Any sequences exactly the same for all animals have been skipped.
Analogous structures have very different anatomies but similar functions. These are seen in organisms that are not necessarily closely related, but live in similar environments and have similar adaptations.