Friday, August 22, 2008

Any leads on when pandas join the genome club?

Tonight's bedtime conversation veered all over the map (par for the course), but at one point touched on the announced Chinese effort to sequence the genome of the giant panda. Of course, a key concern was that this did not involve any pain or injury to the beloved bicolors, so the concept of buccal swabbing was introduced.

This project was announced last spring. I thought it was planned to be released during the Beijing Olympics, but that is apparently an invention of my imagination.

So, anyone out there in the know care to hint or leak? When will the first ursid genome arrive? And who was the lucky bear?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And we can finally figure out whether they are cuddly bears or really big raccoons!

Keith Robison said...

Well, that was actually settled molecularly about 2 decades ago -- unlike koalas, water bears & Alabama football coaches, they really are bears (though the first diverging of extant bears)