Posts tagged autopod

In the late Devonian period, roughly 365 million years ago, fish-like creatures started venturing from shallow waters onto land.

Among the various adaptations associated with the switch to land life was the conversion of fins into limbs. This transition allowed animals to both navigate aquatic habitats and walk on land.

We already know that fins and limbs share the same genetic program for their induction and early development. But due to their divergent morphological traits (form and structure), it was unknown how a fin could evolve into a limb.

But now, a paper published in the journal Developmental Cell by Renata Freitas and colleagues from the University of Andalusia (Seville, Spain), suggests the key to fin-to-limb transition lies in the regulation of the homeotic (responsible for the formation of body parts) gene hoxd13.

(Source: theconversation.edu.au)

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