Minireview
On the nature of thumbs
-
* Corresponding author: Günter P Wagner gunter.wagner@yale.edu
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06520-8106, USA.
Genome Biology 2008, 9:213 doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-3-213
Published: 4 March 2008Abstract
Asymmetric regulation of Hox gene expression pre-dates the appearance of tetrapod digits, and was co-opted in the development of 'thumbness'. This asymmetric expression correlates with independent morphological evolutionary variation of digit 1.