Lungless salamanders’ skin expresses protein crucial for lung function
For decades, scientists have assumed that the hundreds of species of salamanders that lack lungs actually “breathe” through their skin and the lining of the mouth, and Harvard researchers are providing the first concrete evidence for how they do it. A new study, authored by James Hanken, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and curator of herpetology; Zachary Lewis, who completed his Ph.D. while working with Hanken; and then-Harvard Extension School student Jorge Dorantes, shows that a gene that produces surfactant protein c — a key protein for lung function — is expressed in the skin and mouths of lungless salamanders, suggesting it also plays an important role for cutaneous respiration. The study is described in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “They are deploying the same kind of machinery that lunged salamanders use,” Hanken said. “Generally, this had only been looked...