The topic of Matsumi Ladies Clinic Mita English blog in September is about hands and fingers.

In the final part, I create a medical article about origin and evolution of hands and fingers.

 

One of the great transformations required for the descendants of fish to become creatures that could walk on land was the replacement of fin rays by fingers.

Fin rays are honey linear structures which support the fin of fish.

 

As reported in the one of the most scientific journals, scientists show that the same proteins that make fin rays in fish play a central role in forming the fingers of four-legged creatures.

The researchers describe how the small flexible bones found at the ends of fins are related to fingers, which are more suitable for life on land in this article.

 

The team focused on the genes, which control the body plan of a growing embryo along the head-to-tail, or shoulder-to-fingertip, axis.

The proteins, coded by these genes, are known to be crucial for limb development.

They studied that the cells, which produced these proteins, became parts of an adult fin in the fish.

 

Another reserchers have shown that the deletion of these genes caused the mice without development of limbs.

When scientists deleted those same genes in fish, the long fins rays were greatly reduced.

 

Thus, the origin of fingers in creatures on land are fin rays in fish.