Episode 3: How Do You Make a Snake?

It seems only fitting that a podcast series called Along the Backbone should discuss the formation of the backbone in one of lengthiest vertebrates: snakes.

Podcast Teaser: Snakes are lizards.  More specifically, snakes are limbless, eyelidless, earless lizards with megakinetic skulls and well-developed salivary glands that often produce venom.  Among the many standout features of snakes, perhaps the most fascinating is how these vertebrates routinely develop a body that will have 120 or more rib-bearing vertebrae and no limbs.  It turns out that a simple but profound difference in the timing of the expression of developmental genes called HOX genes renders snakes limbless, whereas an increase in the frequency of another set of clock-like genes generates their amazing number of vertebrae.

• Along the Backbone – Episode 3: How Do You Make a Snake?

References / Resources:

• Cohn, M.J., and Tickle, C. 1999. Developmental basis of limblessness in snakes. Nature, 399:474-479.


• Gomez, C. et al. 2008. Control of segment number in vertebrate embryos. Nature, 454:335-339.


• Vonk, F.J., and Richardson, M.K. 2008. Serpent clocks tick faster. Nature, 454:282-283.

Transcript available upon request.