lpetrich

The <a href="http://gnn.tigr.org" target="_blank">Genome News Network</a> now has articles on using genome sequences to help create antibacterial vaccines (the idea is to provoke an immune response to a bacterium's surface proteins), and also on locating mutations in genes involved in the mouse vomeronasal system (they can produce a reduced ability to detect sex partners and to detect rivals; one such mutation makes male mice try to mate with other male mice).

But the most interesting news is addition of some more species to the National Human Genome Research Institute's high-priority list. It now has four new species:

Domestic dog
Domestic bovine
The ciliate Oxytricha trifallax
The lower metazoan Trichoplax adhaerens (looks like an amoeba, but is multicelled)

Over at <a href="http://www.genome.gov/page.cfm?pageID=10002154" target="_blank">NHGRI's Prioritization List</a>, one can find the proposals submitted for the various species.

Dogs and bovines have been bred for a variety of features, and dog breeds especially are a natural laboratory for comparative genetics, due to the variety of variations among breeds and due to the limited genetic variety in many "pure" breeds of dogs.

And understanding evolution better is a common theme in many of the proposals; evolutionary biology has been very useful in comparative genomics, in enabling the identification of genes across species.

{RA: edited to fix link.}

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>