A New Gene That Shapes Mouse Pigmentation Patterning 英文参考文献.docVIP

Research Digest Synopses of Research Articles A New Gene That Shapes Mouse Pigmentation Patterning Scientists have long known that variation in animal color patterns carry far more than cosmetic signi?cance. Darwin ?rst connected pigmentation with adaptive advantage, noting that male ?nches with bright red plumage enjoyed greater reproductive success than their drab competitors. Explaining why coloration confers such advantages, however, has proved somewhat easier than showing how it arises. Biologists studying how neighboring regions of the vertebrate body plan develop differences in appearance and form the protein nonfunctional.The researchers made certain that Tbx15 really is the droopy ear gene by deleting most of the gene’s coding region and showing that this“knocked-out’’gene produces the typical droopy ear mouse. The pattern of embryonic Tbx15 expression—determined by observing messenger RNA transcripts in developing tissues of the head, trunk, and limbs—suggests that early expression of Tbx15 in the dorsal ?ank sets coordinates for dorsoventral differences in hair have identi?ed a small number length and pigmentation. Candille of signaling pathways common et al. demonstrate that the regional to all animals. How and whether pigment differences characteristic of these pathways also control the developmental expression and variation of surface attributes like hair color, hair density, and hair length are unclear. By studying an old mouse mutant adults is indeed established soon after embryonic Tbx15 expression. So this boundary in pigmentation is set up very early during development. Interestingly, the early coordinates of the future called droopy ear, Gregory Barsh and colleagues show that a member of the pigment boundary do not correspond to any other known developmental well-known family of T-box genes is boundary. required for a key pigmentation pattern in mice. The Tbx15 pigmentation effects seen in these lab mice, the researchers Many vertebrate spec