Monday, April 17, 2017

Tiny DNA tweaks made snakes legless






This article explains how scientist recently got a glimpse of how snakes lost their legs in a genetic sense. Snakes in one point had legs so the question has risen as to how they actually lost them genetically. Scientist learned that it was deletion in the genetic sequence that lead to the activation of the gene that controls reptiles leg length. The deletion only allows the gene to be expressed for a very brief amount of time and not enough for legs to grow. The discovery of this can be vital because it can help end the controversial conversations about fossil snakes whether they had hind legs or not. Also there is now the thought of reversing the effects of these deletions and possibly add legs to snakes.


http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/tiny-dna-tweaks-made-snakes-legless  

https://phys.org/news/2016-10-genetic-snakes-legs.html

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