The late geneticist and evolutionary biologist Susumu Ohno noted that Cambrian animals required complex new proteins such as, for example, lysyl oxidase in order to support their stout body structures. When these molecules originated in Cambrian animals, they also likely represented a completely novel folded structure unlike anything present in Precambrian forms of life such as sponges or one-celled organisms. Thus, Axe was convinced that explaining the kind of innovation that occurred during the Cambrian explosion and many other events in the history of life required a mechanism that could
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