An alternate route to complexity: Trade-off between transcriptome plasticity and genome evolution in cephalopods

RNA editing is a post-transcriptional process that allows for diversification of proteomes beyond the genomic blueprint, a phenomenon called "recoding". However, it is infrequently used among animals for this purpose. I will review the state-of-the-art understanding of recoding by editing, and discuss at length recent results showing that recoding is particularly common in behaviorally sophisticated coleoid cephalopods (e.g. squid and octopus). In particular, the trade-off between genome evolution and transcriptome plasticity will be suggested as a partial explanation for the rarity of recoding in most animal species.