A tidal wave of genomic information came ashore this week in the form of 45 new genome sequences of birds. In a series of papers released in Science hundreds of researches combine to analyze the hundreds of billions of pieces of genetic code of representatives of all the major groups of birds. Prior to this only three bird genomes had been completed including that of the chicken, turkey and finch.
To give you some perspective on the sheer magnitude of this data set, in 2000 the first genome of a mammal was reported. That genome was the human genome and it took 10 years and around a billion dollars to complete. The chicken genome took years to finish and cost millions of dollars. In 2014 nearly every day a genome of an organism has being published. Many of these genomes are much larger and more complex than the human genome. DNA sequencers have…
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Interesting James 🙂
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