Studying for a final, and I am just wondering why the discovery of homeotic genes was exciting for scientists: I know that they determine what body parts grow where, but why is this significant?
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What was significant about them is that they were found in many species of animal, from flies to humans. The genes, for example, that said 'eyes grow here' in mice did the same thing in flies. So you could take a mouse gene, put it in a fly and where it was expressed eyes would grow. This shows the evolutionary relationship we have with each other, it was a surprise that we are still so similar in certain respects. The genes and the method of laying out the body plan has been conserved through evolutionary time.