Date:
October 30, 2015
Source:
Texas Tech University
As
the closest real-world cousin of a Halloween nightmare, the vampire bat is
unique among vertebrates because it feeds only on the blood of other mammals.
But according to new research from two Texas Tech University faculty members in
the Department of Biological Sciences, these bats may now be specially designed
for it.
In
their soon-to-be-published study "Secretory gene recruitments in vampire
bat salivary adaptation and potential convergences with sanguivorous
leeches," Caleb D. Phillips, an assistant professor and curator of genetic
resources at the Natural Science Research Laboratory, and Robert Baker, Horn
professor emeritus and curator of mammals emeritus at the Natural Science
Research Laboratory, said some of the venomous contents in the bats' saliva
likely evolved by recruiting ancestral genes to produce new transcript
molecules rather than by creating completely new gene sequences.
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