Puffer Beaks
Posted by Shari Horowitz in Tropical Fish Hobbyist Blog on May 9, 2012 at 7:57 am
WESTERN BANK, Sheffield — New research focusing on tooth development in the deadly fish -unchanged through evolution – shows that after the first generation of teeth the program for continued tooth replacement modifies to form a distinctive and unusual `parrot like´ beak.
The study, which is the first time scientists have analyzed the development of the fish´s unique beak, also supports the idea that evolution doesn´t make jumps, as its distinctive bite has been modified from a set of genes responsible for tooth development and preserved over 400 million years.
Dr Gareth Fraser of the University of Sheffield´s Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, who led the project, said: “It goes beyond fishes and even morphological novelty; we can use the pufferfish beak as a model for a simplified tooth replacement system – composed of just four continually replacing teeth that make up the beak structure. It is of great interest for science to understand the process of tooth replacement, to understand the genes that govern the continued supply of teeth and mechanisms of dental stem cell maintenance.
Source: http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=46110072538
Photograph by Ed Wong
