For decades, scientists have assumed that the hundreds of species of salamanders that lack lungs actually “breathe” through their skin and the lining of the mouth, and Harvard researchers are providing the first concrete evidence for how they do it.
A new study, authored by James Hanken, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and curator of herpetology, Zachary Lewis, a postdoc working in Hanken’s lab, and then-Harvard Extension School student Jorge Dorantes, shows that a gene that produces surfactant protein c — a key protein for lung function — is...
Read more about Lungless salamanders’ skin expresses protein crucial for lung function