[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Genetic comparisons
I received this from a National Science Foundation news server. I would
expect that when you compare the beneficial effects to radiation to humans,
it is better to use fruit flies than nematodes. I wonder how yeast compare?
-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
3050 Traymore Lane
Bowie, MD 20715-2024
E-mail: jenday1@email.msn.com (H)
Gene Study Determines How Humans are Related to Fruit Flies and Nematode
Worms
The most comprehensive genetic study of evolutionary relationships among
those animals whose genes have been completely sequenced - the human, the
fruit fly, and the nematode worm - has determined that the human species is
more closely related to the fruit fly than to the nematode.
"We compared 100 genes that are common among these three species - the
largest data set ever used to address this question - and obtained a result
that is unambiguous," says S. Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at
Penn State University.
Hedges and his colleagues overturn a popular hypothesis that was based
primarily on the study of a single gene. The research team, comprising
scientists from Penn State and Japan, was funded by the National Science
Foundation (NSF). Two of these species represent much larger groups of
animals, with humans representing vertebrates and the fruit fly representing
arthropods.
The study impacts any field that is concerned with the inheritance of traits
in major groups of animals, Hedges says. The results - expected to affect
the content of biology textbooks - have important implications for research
in fields such as medicine and developmental biology. The results of the
study were published in the web-based journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.
The researchers tapped into the wealth of data now available in the
completely sequenced genomes of the three species. The nematode and fruit
fly are among the most widely used model organisms in medical and genetics
research because they can be bred easily and produce new generations
quickly.
"A lot of our understanding of human medicine is based on these species
because we can do experiments with them that you wouldn't do with humans,"
Hedges says. Scientists' understanding of how the species are related will
determine how to reconstruct their histories and whether a mutational change
is interpreted as relatively recent or ancient. [Cheryl Dybas]
http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/tip020507.htm
************************************************************************
You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,
send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu Put the text "unsubscribe
radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.
You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/