Research gains toehold on skeletal evolution
Monday, November 4, 2013 - 05:30
in Biology & Nature
The developmental rules for forming a foot just got a little simpler. New research led by UMass Dartmouth Biology faculty member Dr. Kathryn Kavanagh and Harvard Medical School Professor Cliff Tabin, joined by Professor Uri Alon and Oren Shoval, of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science's Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Akinori Kan of Harvard Medical School's Department of Genetics, and UMass Dartmouth's Dr. Benjamin Winslow and graduate student Brian Leary, studied the toe bones, or phalanges, of animals in order to test an idea that has been debated by evolutionary biologists for centuries—that the developmental process itself can guide evolution.