This article stirs up my memory on something I saw and read. I am not a biologist so I will do my best to describe this in my mediocre understanding:
Do a search for Dr. Hans Larsson of McGill University up in Canada. Saw some of his work featured on KQED one night. Basically he has taken chicken embryos and injected proteins that inhibited certain genes in the DNA from turning on a given times during embryonic growth so that it created additional vertibrae to form tails on chickens! I know that Larsson has gone on to look at fins and wings on animals to better understand the evolutionary process. Here is a link to their lab:
http://redpath-staff.mcgill.ca/larsson/researchpages/birdskeletalmorphology/birdskeletalmorphology.htmThe same program also showed work that did extend the same idea to grow feathers on chicken feet (in the place of scales). But the highlight was turning on the gene to grow teeth. I have looked everywhere for a picture of the teeth on the internet but to no avail. That one image was incredible and I wish I could get it to show all. Best description I can give was a chicken egg with the top cracked and open where the reseracher would add a certain thing in a liquid of protein to the egg every so often and slap it back into the incubator. Within weeks they showed a beak with tiny bumps that look like teeth. Here is the closest thing I found on the teeth:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mutant-chicken-grows-alliOther scientists' work like that of Dr. Sean Carroll from University of Wisconsin-Madison were also discussed. Sean Carroll was able to also manipulate genes such that insects had wings that glowed in the dark and the removal of a wing altogether on an insect.
Anyhow, I try not to let it bother me too much every time I gaze upon that lazy
.
-L.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/2010 10:36PM by Catalonian Burro.