Bringing Out the Mouse's Inner Bat

Researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center have made transgenic mice that look sort of like bats, with extra-long forelimbs. They published their work in the latest issue of Genes and Development. Since the Prx1 gene plays a part in the elongation of limb bones in mammals, they put the bat version of the Prx1 enhancer into mice, and found that the mice developed "arms" that were longer than the normal mice when they were born. Their work not only shows evolution in action, but also offers more evidence that regulatory genes drive incremental change that leads to the evolution of species. (And in case you missed it, Neill Shubin just published a book exploring the idea of incremental change in evolution.)