Researchers Discover Genetic Clues to How Bats Develop Wings

Bats. They're strange, aren't they? With their spooky, skeleton-looking wings that you don't want getting stuck in your hair. But, it turns out, those wings might be the genetic key to unlocking how limbs develop. New research published in "Nature Genetics" and "PLoS Genetics" illuminates how early bats took flight. The interesting part is that a bat's genes and a mouse's genes are similar but what makes a bat depends on so-called enhancers. Enhancers are like genetic switches that time out when a gene gets turned on to develop in a certain way. By exploring and mapping out how these enhancers work in the Natal Long-Fingered Bats researchers identified what made the wings develops as wings. The findings might one day help researchers see how humans develop malformed limbs and potentially come up with treatments. That's pretty batastic. For NewsBeat Social, I'm Molly Riehl.