‘‘Our experiments show that while a transient disturbance in the development of foot scales can permanently turn them into feathers, it is much harder to permanently disrupt feather development itself,’’ concluded Milinkovitch. froMichel Milinkovitch’
‘‘Clearly, over the course of evolution, the network of interacting genes has become extremely robust, ensuring the proper development offeathers even under substantial genetic or environmental perturbations. The big challenge now is to understand how genetic interactions evolve to allow for the emergence of morphological novelties such as proto-feathers,” Milinkovitch added in the press release.
This research highlights the Sonic Hedgehog gene’s importance in both feather evolution and species-specific feather variations.