Sentences with phrase «venom genes evolve»

And to date, biologists studying other species have seen venom genes evolve at a breakneck pace: The conotoxins employed by cone snails, for example, are known to mutate rapidly.

From such studies came the current canonical model of how venom genes evolve through the chance replication and mutation of genes for enzymes, peptides and other proteins.

Armed with the both the king cobra and Burmese python genome the team was able to show that, despite previous hypotheses that venom genes evolve «early» in the lineage leading to snakes, venom gene families do not duplicate early, in fact the study shows that the rapid and extensive expansion of functionally important venom toxin families is restricted to the venomous «advanced» snake lineage.

Not exact matches

What they found surprised them and challenged all of their initial hypotheses: Rattlesnakes have quickly evolved a great variety of differences through the loss of genes, resulting in varying venom gene numbers and types.