The Repeater - The Wild Side - Olivia Judson - Evolution - Opinion - New York Times Blog
There are a couple of interesting things about this discovery. The first is that the molecular basis of the change from pelvis to no pelvis does not involve a mutation to the protein-coding region of the Pitx1 gene itself. In other words, the protein made from the gene hasn't changed. What has changed is the way the gene is expressed. This is in contrast to the sorts of mutations one often reads about as being involved in evolution, which typically involve changes to the protein itself.
Rajan: I guess I never thought of evolution as change in the ability of a gene to express itself. I simplistically always thought that the genes have to get modified for an evolutionary change.
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