Word: tabin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Malcolm P. Logan, a research fellow in genetics at HMS, and Clifford J. Tabin, professor of genetics, performed experiments in which chickens developed wings with the characteristics of legs, such as leg-specific muscles and claws...
Scientists have long been puzzled over how the forelimb and hindlimb develop, as the same genes for development are active in all four limb buds in the embryo. Logan and Tabin determined that additional wing- and leg-specific genes are involved in limb development...
...decade have scientists begun to tease apart the mysteries of Hox genes. Clustered in groups of eight to 11, on as many as four chromosomes in a developing embryo's cells, these genes switch on and off in sequence. Since embryos mature from the top down, explains biologist Cliff Tabin of the Harvard Medical School, a Hox gene that turns off a bit early, or stays on just a touch longer, can make a dramatic difference in the formation of the embryo. Swans, for example, have more neck vertebrae than chickens and thus longer necks. That is because...
Duboule concedes that "this is not even a real hypothesis," just a hunch, and that testing it will not be easy. One problem, contends Harvard's Tabin, is that Duboule and his colleagues studied "the wrong fish." Zebrafish are prolific and easy to raise under laboratory conditions, but they are advanced in evolutionary terms. A study of more primitive sea life, such as sharks or sturgeon, might yield greater amounts of evolutionary information; even better subjects would be lungfish and coelacanths, mysterious, nearly extinct creatures that lurk in the ocean depths and are the living fish closest to the fishlike...
...Tabin did have one concern. "Maybe I should wish that my post-docs were playing less computer games," he joked...