ANIMALS
Scientists make the world’s first genetically modified snakes
WORDS JENNIFER NALEWICKI
Introducing the world’s first genetically modified snake
© Getty / University of Geneva / MOLA
For the first time ever, scientists have created genetically modified
snakes. The CRISPR-edited reptiles are providing new insight
into how corn snakes
(Pantherophis guttatus) develop their precisely patterned scales. Much like feathers on birds or hairs on mammals, snake scales are the result of placodes – small, thickened structures on the skin that develop at the embryonic level. But unlike most other species, including mice, where the placodes are random, a snake’s placodes develop in a highly organised fashion, laying out the positioning of every single scale. Rather, the spatial organisation of these placodes follows a pattern in nature first explained by mathematician Alan Turing.