The mystery of the short beak proposed by Darwin has finally been solved

Charles Darwin is very fascinated by domestic pigeons

In a new study, biologists at the University of Utah found that in many breeds of domestic pigeons, mutations in the ROR2 gene are related to the reduction of the beak

"Some of the most distinctive features of Robinow syndrome are facial features, including a broad and prominent forehead, short, wide nose and mouth, which are reminiscent of the short beak phenotype of pigeons," said Elena, the first author of the paper.

This paper will be published in Current Biology on September 21, 2021

Draw genes and skull

Researchers have bred two pigeons with short and medium beaks.

"The breeder chooses this beak purely for aesthetics, so that it is harmful-it will never appear in nature

The parents of the short beak and the middle beak gave rise to the first generation of offspring with the middle beak

Boer said: "The cool thing about this method is that it allows us to observe the size and shape of the entire skull.

Next, the researchers compared the genomes of the pigeons

Shapiro said: "Grandparents with a small beak have the same chromosome segment as a grandparent with a small beak.

The research team then compared the entire genome sequence of many different pigeon breeds; 56 pigeons from 31 short-beaked breeds and 121 pigeons from 58 medium or long-beaked breeds

Boer said: "The fact that we got the same strong signal from two independent methods is really exciting and provides an additional piece of evidence that the ROR2 gene locus is involved

The authors speculate that the short beak mutation causes the ROR2 protein to fold in a new way, but the team plans to conduct functional experiments to figure out how the mutation affects craniofacial development

Pigeon lovers

The lure of the domestic pigeon that fascinated Darwin still attracts the curious

Shapiro said: "In the past ten years, every paper published in our laboratory has relied on their samples to some extent
.
Without the pigeon breeding colony, we would not be able to do this
.
"

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Current Biology

DOI

10.
1016/j.
cub.
2021.
08.
068