By Rory GallowayScience writer
22 November 2017
The genes that caused scales to
become feathers in the early ancestors of birds have been found by US
scientists.
By expressing these genes in
embryo alligator skin, the researchers caused the reptiles' scales to change in
a way that may be similar to how the earliest feathers evolved.
Feathers are highly complex
natural structures and they're key to the success of birds.
But they initially evolved in
dinosaurs, birds' extinct ancestors.
Leading the study, Professor
Cheng-Ming Chuong told the BBC that this discovery links important recent
palaeontological finds with modern biology, in understanding feather evolution.
Birds have had feathers for as
long as they have existed as a group and Professor Chuong couldn't study
primitive examples of feathers in any living animals.
"In today's existing
reptiles, the one more similar to dinosaurs is actually the alligator, belonging
to the Archosaur group," said Prof Chuong from the University of Southern
California, in Los Angeles.
Dinosaurs and birds also belong
to this wider group of "Archosaur reptiles"; Prof Chuong wanted to
investigate whether the feather-forming genes he had identified in birds could
change those scales into feathers. So he set out to turn on these genes in the
skin of alligator embryos.
"You can see we can indeed
induce them to form appendages, although it is not beautiful feathers, they
really try to elongate" he explained of the outcome. They are likely
similar to the structures on those feather-pioneering dinosaurs 150 million
years ago.
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