What the genomes of 240 mammals can tell us about humans
Credit: Kevin Schafer/NPL
Sequencing so many mammalian species is an enormous accomplishment, says David Haussler, scientific director of the University of California Santa Cruz’s Genomics Institute. “We were always dreaming about that.” Haussler helped to sequence the first human genome in the early 2000s.Those first mammalian genomes published long ago were a good start, says Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, a geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden who is one of the leaders of Zoonomia.
Other analyses looked at how the genomes differ, highlighting how certain traits such as sense of smell evolved, but also helping to point researchers to which genes contribute to disease. Genome-wide association studies have already compared thousands of human genomes to identify variants that are linked with disease. But finding the precise genes that aren’t just linked to, but cause a disease, has proved difficult, especially for conditions that have millions of associated genes.
. This analysis lends support to the hypothesis that mammals had already started evolutionarily diverging before Earth was struck by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago — but that they diverged much more rapidly afterwards.The Zoonomia Project is just one of dozens of efforts to sequence animal genomes.
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