Cellular, Molecular, and Genetic Mechanisms of Avian Beak Development and Evolution

Diverse research programs employing complementary strategies have been uncovering cellular, molecular, and genetic mechanisms essential to avian beak development and evolution. In reviewing these discoveries, I offer an interdisciplinary perspective on bird beaks that spans their derivation from jaw...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of genetics 2024-11, Vol.58 (1), p.433-454
Main Author: Schneider, Richard A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
avian beak
Beak - anatomy & histology
Beak - embryology
Beak - growth & development
Biological Evolution
Birds - genetics
Body Patterning - genetics
Cell Lineage - genetics
cranial neural crest
craniofacial development
evolutionary-developmental biology
Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental - genetics
Genome-Wide Association Study
Mesoderm - growth & development
Mesoderm - metabolism
Morphogenesis - genetics
Neural Crest - growth & development
Neural Crest - metabolism
Quail - genetics
quail–duck chimeras
quck
species-specific size and shape
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Summary:Diverse research programs employing complementary strategies have been uncovering cellular, molecular, and genetic mechanisms essential to avian beak development and evolution. In reviewing these discoveries, I offer an interdisciplinary perspective on bird beaks that spans their derivation from jaws of dinosaurian reptiles, their anatomical and ecological diversification across major taxonomic groups, their common embryonic origins, their intrinsic patterning processes, and their structural integration. I describe how descriptive and experimental approaches, including gene expression and cell lineage analyses, tissue recombinations, surgical transplants, gain- and loss-of-function methods, geometric morphometrics, comparative genomics, and genome-wide association studies, have identified key constituent parts and putative genes regulating beak morphogenesis and evolution. I focus throughout on neural crest mesenchyme, which generates the beak skeleton and other components, and describe how these embryonic progenitor cells mediate species-specific pattern and link form and function as revealed by 20 years of research using chimeras between quail and duck embryos.
ISSN:0066-4197
1545-2948
1545-2948
DOI:10.1146/annurev-genet-111523-101929