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Scientists have used CRISPR to disrupt the genes responsible for forming the patterns on butterfly wings:
The brilliant, intricate patterns on butterfly wings — from haunting eye spots to iridescent splashes of blue — look as if they were painted on by teams of artists. Researchers thought that a complex collection of genes might be responsible, interacting to build up the final pattern. But two studies now suggest that two genes play an outsize role in determining the wing's lines and colours. Turning off these 'master' genes disrupts the canvas, dulling the colours or turning the insects monochromatic.
The studies published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences challenge the old paradigm of wing-pattern development, says Bob Reed, an evolutionary developmental biologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and lead author of one of the papers and a co-author on the other. Understanding how wing patterns are controlled gives scientists greater insight into the evolution of traits that help the insects to avoid predation and attract mates.
"The two different genes are complementary. They are painting genes specialized, in a way, for making patterns," says Arnaud Martin, a developmental biologist at George Washington University in Washington DC, and lead author of one of the studies.
Also at New Atlas, the The New York Times, and BBC (2m video).
Macroevolutionary shifts of WntA function potentiate butterfly wing-pattern diversity (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1708149114) (DX)
Single master regulatory gene coordinates the evolution and development of butterfly color and iridescence (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1709058114) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 21 2017, @04:54AM
It's becoming a rapidly recurring theme that genetic research is less than 'thorough'.
Fundamentally I think the reason for this is that it's becoming increasingly clear that genetic research is not really progressing as expected. What we need to do is go beyond a purely correlational understanding of genetics before we can actually start doing anything meaningful with genetics. The idea was that a preponderance of correlations was supposed to help yield a causal understanding. That is not terribly unreasonable, but it has certainly not come to be what's happened or is happening.
It's amusing that on the advent of CRISPR people, and even some scientists, were immediately alluding to the imminence of things like "designer babies." But then, like now, you can simply respond with a basic trick question. What's the gene for hair color? It's a trick question since we don't know. There are a variety of different genes associated with different hair colors, and those genes in turns are also linked to other seemingly unrelated things. For instance the gene for red hair is also linked to pale skin. If you don't see the problem there let's take something more ridiculous. It seems intuitively reasonable than there would be a gene for hair color, so we assume such a thing exists - and we create sophisticated and intelligent sounding models to explain the somewhat bizarre correlations to other things. It seems obvious that there would be no "NBA gene" that everybody in the NBA would have. Nonetheless we could find it. And it's likely that whatever it is, it would map strongly to black skin - much how red hair maps strongly to pale skin. Don't worry, we can explain that though. Because after all, we can explain anything - even when it's not true.
We can of course see our "NBA gene" would be completely meaningless - a spurious correlation. But that is the same for the entire field, in its current state. It seems more reasonable only because of the austere of 'genetic research.' Like others have mentioned it's entirely possible that they were not even actually responsible for the changing wing patterns. Imagine all of the circuits you could manipulate within a computer to change what was rendered on the screen. Just because you find one blacks out the screen doesn't mean you've found the "master switch for screen renderings." It just means you've screwed with a system you have no understanding of, and are seeing a visible change. Congratulations sir, you've achieved nothing. Now publish!