Extinction
Night of the Living Dead Pigeon
15/03/13 16:18 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Ben Novak, is a 26-year-old genetics student who has put his graduate studies on hold to help bring the extinct passenger pigeon back from the dead by sequencing available fragments of the genome of the passenger pigeon from the slime left in museum specimens and comparing them to the genome of its cousin, the band-tailed pigeon. Working with evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Novak hopes to complete full sequences of the passenger and band-tailed pigeon genomes within a year. S. Pelech comments that even with the successful sequencing of the complete genome of the passenger pigeon, the site-directed mutagenesis of the genome of a living pigeon relative to convert it into a passenger pigeon is just too expensive and time-consuming to be worthwhile. Read More...
Strength in Numbers
08/08/12 12:57 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
University of Chicago in Illinois' Tim Wootton and Cathy Pfister suggest that sheer numbers are more important than genetic diversity for preserving species threatened with extinction based on their 12 years of breeding studies of the sea palm Postelsia. Genetic diversity did not influence the odds of a population's survival, whereas the size of the population was more critical. S. Pelech points out that preservation of habitat that is rich in biological diversity seems to be the best solution to ensure survival of most species facing extinction today due to their interdependence. He notes that there are many examples, including humans and whales, where genetic diversity appears to be less critical for avoiding extinction than population size. When one looks closely at the various genes encoded in diverse animal species, the number of genes and their nucleotide sequences are remarkably similar. It seems that phenotypic differences arise primarily from where and when the proteins encoded from these genes are produced. Read More...
Devils' Disease and Diversity
25/03/11 13:37 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Pennsylvania State University's Stephan Schuster and his colleagues aim in a conservation effort called "Project Ark" to help save the endangered Tasmanian devil — whose population is dwindling due to the rapid spread of a species-specific infectious cancer, devil tumor facial disease — using a genomics-based approach to genotype up to 500 Tasmanian devils. S. Pelech comments that with about 40% of the world's estimated 10 million species of life facing extinction, one of the real bonuses of plummeting genome-wide sequencing costs is the possibility it offers to remediate some of the damage that humankind has wrought on this planet in the future. The advantage of a database with the full sequences of thousands of diverse genomes is that it can be easily copied on a wide-scale onto small storage devices for broad dissemination, even into space. Read More...