Roadkill Genomics

Presented by Professor Jenny Graves & staff and students
Comparative Genomics Research Group

Now that the human genome has been completely sequenced, we need to identify genes and control signals among the genetic junk, and to discover what all the 30,000-odd genes do. One of the best ways to do this is to compare genomes between humans and other animals. Sequences that haven’t changed much are likely to be important, while sequences that vary a lot might be junk – or could lead us to the essence of human-ness.

The more distantly related the animals are that are being compared, the more changes will have accumulated. This means that chimps or even mice (diverging from humans 5 or 50 million years ago) are often too close to distinguish the genes from the junk. Australian mammals to the rescue! Marsupials diverged from human/mouse lineage about 130 million years ago and monotremes 170 million years ago. We can also use other higher vertebrates – birds and reptiles – that diverged 310 million years ago. Again, Australia has some of the most interesting bird and reptile fauna in the world, and we exploit anything that crosses our path (or unwarily crosses the road).

We compare genomes at the cytological level by “chromosome painting”, at the level of gene arrangement by physical mapping and at the molecular level by sequencing. We focus on our regions of the genome of particular interest, including the genes that determine sex in animals and humans. In this mini-project, we will show you how we grow all kinds of mammal, bird and reptile (even frog) cells, prepare and paint chromosomes, characterize and map genes, sequence them and analyse the immense amount of sequence data from genome projects.

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