December 16
Posted by the Node, on 16 December 2012
Today’s recommended paper is:
Specifying and Sustaining Pigmentation Patterns in Domestic and Wild Cats
Christopher B. Kaelin, Xiao Xu et al. (2012)
Science 337 (6101), 1536-1541
Submitted by Heather Etchevers:
“I am interested in skin development and pigmentation. But this paper was justifiably published in a general science journal because to some extent, everyone has asked themselves the question of how the leopard got its pattern of spots – in some form or another. The technical approaches in this paper started classical and then used a nearly impossible model to test its conclusions: rare mutant, endangered felid samples from captive animals, and used as controls an impressive number of samples from wild animals. It makes for a good read and clearly leaves avenues open for further exploration.”
From December 1 to 24 we are featuring Node readers’ favourite papers of the past year. Click the calendar in the side bar each day to see a new paper. To see all papers submitted so far, see the calendar archive.