February 7,
2019 by José Tadeu Arantes, FAPESP
Snakes and
lizards are reptiles that belong to the order Squamata. They share several
traits but differ in one obvious respect: Snakes do not have limbs. The two
suborders diverged more than 100 million years ago. Identification of the
genetic factors involved in this loss of limbs is a focus of an article titled
"Phenotype loss is associated with widespread divergence of the gene
regulatory landscape in evolution," published by Juliana Gusson Roscito
and collaborators in Nature Communications.
Another
equally interesting focus of the article is eye degeneration in certain
subterranean mammals. "We investigated these two cases in order to
understand a much more general process, which is how genome changes during
evolution lead to phenotype changes," Roscito said.
Currently
working as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology
and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, Roscito's postdoctoral scholarship was linked
to the thematic project "Comparative phylogeography, phylogeny,
paleoclimate modeling and taxonomy of neotropical reptiles and
amphibians," for which Miguel Trefaut Urbano Rodrigues is the principal
investigator. Rodrigues is a professor at the University of São Paulo's
Bioscience Institute (IB-USP) in Brazil and supervised Roscito's postdoctoral
research. He is also a coauthor of the recently published article.
"The
research consisted of an investigation of the genomes of several species of
vertebrates, including the identification of genomic regions that changed only
in snakes or subterranean mammals, while remaining unchanged in other species
that have not lost their limbs or have normal eyes," Roscito said.
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