Kākāpō are prone to disease and infertility. Only intensive species management has saved the flightless parrots from extinction. Genome data now reveals the genetic reasons behind these problems.
DNA of the male-determining Y chromosome has been completely sequenced end-to-end, and it’s just as weird as we expected. Will we finally be able to understand how it works?
African scientists need a central repository where the genomic data they capture can be uploaded and shared.
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Advances in technology have enabled researchers to sequence the large regions of repetitive DNA that eluded the Human Genome Project.
Inequality in coronavirus genomic surveillance delays the detection of globally significant variants of concern.
Camilo Freedman/ picture alliance via Getty Images
Improving genomic surveillance to better understand new variants as they arise in different parts of the world could prevent threats to vulnerable health systems and populations.
Without genome sequencing, we would be blind to new variants of COVID-19. As Omicron surges in New Zealand, the sequencing focus is shifting to learning about what causes severe or long-term disease.
The numbat is one of the Tasmanian tiger’s closest surviving relatives. And its newly sequenced genome raises the possibility of piecing together the genetic code of its extinct fellow marsupial.
A virus’s genes hold a record of where it’s traveled, and when.
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Claire Guinat, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich; Etthel Windels, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and Sarah Nadeau, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
After a nose swab tests positive for a virus or bacteria, scientists can use the sample’s genetic sequence to figure out where and when the pathogen emerged and how fast it’s changing.
Nuclear bombs use reactions that can occur naturally, but that is a nonsense argument to deregulate them. So why are these same arguments used to promote deregulation of gene technology?
As more genomes are sequenced, it will become clearer when and how the Delta variant slipped through the New Zealand border. The greater the diversity in genomes, the older and larger the outbreak.
The Sars-CoV-2 virus creates about half a mutation per infection.
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SARS-Cov-2 has experienced roughly the same amount of evolutionary change during the pandemic as humans have since Homo habilis first walked the Earth about 2.5m years ago.
Two decades after the ‘full’ human genetic code was released to global fanfare, researchers have finally filled in the blanks that made up 8% of the sequence, thanks to recent advances in genome sequencing.
Looking for bits of DNA at the University of Florida.
David Duffy
The highly infectious nature of the COVID-19 variant, and the fact the infections have no clear link to the border, leaves the worrying possibility of a more widespread community outbreak.
Associate Member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Affiliate Associate Professor of Genome Sciences and Microbiology, University of Washington
Previous Vice President of the Academy of Science of South Africa and DSI-NRF SARChI chair in Fungal Genomics, Professor in Genetics, University of Pretoria, University of Pretoria
Research Professor and DST/NRF SARChI Chair of Virus-Host Dynamics, National Institute for Communicable Diseases, CAPRISA Research Associate, University of the Witwatersrand