Mike joins Nels and Vincent to talk about his work on what controls whether pigeons have scaly or feathered feet, and reveals that the hindlimbs of domestic birds with feathery feet are more like wings at the molecular level.
Nels and Vincent continue with an emerging sub-theme of TWiEVO – organisms with wings – as they reveal enhancer shuffling as a mechanism for producing diverse butterfly wing patterns.
Nels and Vincent discuss the evolution of recombination in the genomes of birds and yeast.
Nels and Vincent talk about how a cellular enzyme contributes to the very high mutation rate of human immunodeficiency virus type 1.
Nels and Vincent launch a new podcast on evolution, and start by discussing how the field has changed through recent mergers of evolutionary and experimental biology in the post-genome era.
