Natures wonders: Making bird feathers (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 11, 2013, 02:53 (4152 days ago) @ David Turell

http://phys.org/news/2013-04-patterns-bird-feathers.html-
"The researchers transplanted a pigment-producing quail follicle into a white chicken and found the chicken produced colored feathers. This led them to believe that the patterning on the bird's coat is not controlled directly by the DNA code, but rather by the spatial organization of MsSC's in the follicle and the regulatory mechanisms. Something in the genome must control these factors, though, for each member of a species, like a black-capped chickadee or bald eagle, to produce identical feather patterns." - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/07/feather_pattern074161.html#sthash.TsEf6B6o.dpuf