An earful of gill: Evolutionary origin of the mammalian outer ... Thomas P. Lozito, Helen Rankin Willsey, J. Andrew Gillis, J. Gage Crump. Repurposing of a gill gene regulatory program for ...

Led by Gage Crump, ... They found that when either human ear or fish gill enhancers were incorporated into the genomes of tadpoles, the enhancers showed activity in their gills.

To investigate the fish-gill-ear question, the researchers, led by Crump’s then graduate student Mathi Thiruppathy, did some clever genetic transfer experiments.

The outer ear is unique to mammals, but its evolutionary origin has remained a mystery. According to a new study published in Nature from the USC Stem Cell lab of Gage Crump, this intricate coil of ...

Scientists have traced the evolutionary origin of humans' outer ears to the gills of ancient fish through a series of gene-editing experiments.

Gene-editing experiments indicate that cartilage in fish gills migrated into the ear canal millions of years ago during the course of our evolution.Going even further back, our outer ears may have ...