How snakes lost a blueprint for making limbs

Snakes lost their limbs over 100 million years ago, but scientists have struggled to identify the genetic changes involved. A Cell paper publishing October 20 sheds some light on the process, describing a stretch of DNA involved in limb formation that is mutated in snakes. When researchers inserted the snake DNA into mice, the animals developed truncated limbs, suggesting that a critical stretch of DNA lost its ability to support limb growth during snake evolution.

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