Chicken scales turned to feathers (again). Two scientists at University of Geneva have used a gene stimulating technique to get chicken embryos to develop feathers on their feet and legs instead of scales. The method involved stimulating genes named Sonic Hedgehog (Shh), which have an important role in organising and developing body organs and structures […]
Heart shape carefully arranged, as described in Nature, vol 427, p309, 22 January 2004. During embryonic development mammal and human hearts, with their four chambers and complex arrangement of vessels and valves, develop from a simple tube. In order to understand how this process happened, Sigolene Meilhac and colleagues labelled cells in the heart tube […]
Fishy leg story reported in ScienceDaily 10 December 2012 and New Scientist 15 December 2012. In an attempt to see how fish fins could have developed into legs in order for evolving land animals to take their first steps, Fernando Casares of the Spanish National Research Council and colleagues injected zebrafish embryos with extra copies […]
Evolutionary history shows in opossum ears, according to a study in ScienceDaily 16 February 2017. Scientists from University of Illinois, King’s College London and University of Chicago have studied the process for forming the jaw and two of the middle ear bones in the opossum, in order to find evidence for the evolutionary theory that […]