A whole host of French rabbits have been doing handstands for nearly a centuryThe acrobatic bunnies aren’t performing a stunt as much as they are a product of stunted genetics, according to a paper published this week in PLOS Genetics.
First discovered in one domesticated rabbit that lived in a Parisian suburb in 1935, the recessive trait is the product of a genetic mutation that hidden in the genetic code of the animals for generations, only then to come up. It’s not a superpower. The rabbit species – the “sauteur d’Alfort,Or “the Alfort jumper” – is also more prone to cataracts become blind.
“The strain has since been preserved to study eye abnormalities and pathological locomotion,” said study co-author Miguel Carneiro, a geneticist at the University of Porto in Portugal, in an email. “Rabbits carrying this mutation would not be able to survive long in the wild because of its deleterious effects.”
The rabbits walk on all fours when they move slowly, but in a hurry they turn to the handstand method. Now has a team of geneticists responsible for all those problems in the the DNA of the breed.
G / O Media can receive a commission
To determine the origin of the animal’s abnormalities, the team of geneticists and developmental biologists bred the Alfort springer with rabbits that jump normally and sequenced the DNA of their offspring. They found that the rabbits that became biped had a mutation on the first chromosome; specifically a warped gene called RORB, which expresses a protein of the same name.
“With modern technology, it’s easy to go from a simple recessive condition to the genes,” said study co-author Leif Andersson, a geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden, in a video interview. “It was expected that there was something wrong with the spinal cord, because they don’t coordinate their front legs and back legs. “
In the Alfort jumping rabbits (perhaps a misnomer, as the rabbits have no hops), this has been proven. The RORB protein is a transcription factor, meaning it has a hand in a number of genes, all of which are expressed in traits. The proteins are usually produced in inhibitory interneurons that stop communication throughout the body. (Imagine an operator refuses to service your calls. In the weird-running rabbits, the interneurons were either less present or completely absent, and, in the latter case, the rabbits would bend their hind legs too much, rendering them unable to jump.
“What happens when you move is you let these neurons fire all the time, they coordinate muscle contractions and get feedback on the balance of the different limbs,” Andersson said. “This coordination of muscle contraction is not correct in these rabbits.”
You may think that the rabbit’s handstand itself is not the mutation, but a solution to a further grueling inhibition of the animal’s iconic locomotion. Andersson said the two-legged locomotion did not cause the animals any pain that he was aware of.
It is not the only animal experiencing running interruption due to genetic mutationsSimilar behavior was seen in mice with a RORB mutation, and previous work van Andersson’s discovered that a mutation in the DMRT3 gene disrupts gait in mice and horses. (Interestingly, it’s that mutation at work when you consider the different gait patterns of certain horse breeds, from Tennessee Walkers to Louisiana Fox Trotters.)
T.thanks to genetic science, this one mysteries can be deciphered on a microscopic scale and could help a better understanding of the communication centers of our own (human) spinal cord, for future medical research.