WIKIPEDIA, MUHAMMAD MAHDI KARIMA single gene underlies the mimetic capabilities of some female Common Mormon butterflies, an international team has found. The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research’s Krushnamegh Kunte and his colleagues published their results in Nature this week (March 5).
Once thought to have been controlled by a set of inherited genes working in tandem, it turns out that doublesex alone is responsible for mimicry in the Common Mormon, which can look like the more colorful and toxic swallowtail butterfly. “Finding a single gene was a surprise,” Kunte told The Scientist. “That it’s such a well-characterized gene with a completely different function is totally mind-boggling.”
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICAL CENTER, DAN KITCHENSAdipose fins, which were long considered vestigial, appear to have evolved more than once and within diverse fish lineages, researchers reported in Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week (March 5). As a result of their comparative phylogenetic analysis, Thomas Stewart from the University of Chicago and his colleagues proposed that further study of these structures could help resolve the evolution of other appendages.
“They have good evidence here that the adipose fin may be a good model for understanding the origins of limbs and fins,” said Peter Wainwright, a biologist at the University of California, Davis, who was ...
