Snakes have not always been legless, but have lost their limbs through evolution. Professor Laura Elo from the University of Turku is part of an international research project that investigates the reasons why snakes lost their limbs.

The ancestors of snakes were tetrapods—vertebrates whose basic body plan included four limbs. Over evolutionary time, snakes lost their limbs, while simultaneously developing extraordinarily elongated bodies.

The University of Turku is part of the research project coordinated by the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM) in Portugal and joined by the University of Florida in the United States. The research project aims to address the question “How snakes lost their limbs”. GIMM will lead the experiments in mice, including genetic manipulation. The research team at the University of Florida will lead the experiments in reptiles, working with snakes and lizards.

Professor of Computational Medicine and Turku Bioscience Group Leader Laura Elo leads the bioinformatics and computational analysis to interpret the extensive molecular data on mice and reptiles generated by GIMM and the University of Florida.

“The challenge is not simply to identify which genes differ between snakes, lizards, and mice, but to understand how cells change their molecular state, how they communicate with each other, and how these processes may have changed during evolution,” says Laura Elo.

The Human Frontier Science Program has granted the research project 1.2 million USD (approximately €1.1 million) in funding, of which the share of the University of Turku is 400,000 USD (approximately €351,000). The funding covers a period of three years.

This project is the only funded project by the Human Frontier Science Program this year involving a research group based in Finland. HFSP funding is highly competitive international research funding, and only around 3% of the submitted applications worldwide were funded this year. 

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