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March 31, 2012
Slow snails, fast genes
When cone snails sink their harpoon-like teeth into their prey, they inject paralyzing venoms made from more than 100 different neurotoxins. Two U-M evolutionary biologists have reconstructed the evolutionary history of the genes that create cone-snail toxins to help explain their impressive diversity and rapid evolution over the last 11 million years.
Photo: Jeanette Johnson