Devils' Disease and Diversity
25/03/11 13:37 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Fri, 03/25/2011 - 13:37.
With about 40% of the world's estimated 10 million species of life facing extinction, one of the real bonuses of plummeting genome-wide sequencing costs is the possibility to remediate some of the damage that humankind has wrought on this planet. With the current sequencing of the genomes of hundreds of diverse species, the emphasis has been on humans and those species that serve as experimental models, sources of human food or adversely affect human and livestock health. However, the emphasis should probably now be placed on those species that are at high risk for extinction.
With the advent of synthetic biology, it is possible to "resurrect" extinct organisms if we know their full genome sequences. Ideally, we should have the complete genomes of many members of the same species. The work by Dr. Schuster and his colleagues for the Tasmanian devil is a step in this direction.
The advantage of a database with the full sequences of thousands of diverse genomes is that it can be easily copied on a wide-scale onto small storage devices. This allows the creation of thousands of 'arks" that can be widely disseminated, even into the cosmos.* This is a lot more efficient that herding animals in pairs on a single wooden ark and hoping for the best. As technology continues to progress and human priorities change, such storage arks of diverse life might be the greatest legacy that we could leave to future generations hundreds or thousands of years from now.
*In principle, such information could even be broadcasted into the universe for reception by other advanced civilizations. They would get quite a surprise when they reconstruct the Tasmanian devil!
Link to the original blog post.
With about 40% of the world's estimated 10 million species of life facing extinction, one of the real bonuses of plummeting genome-wide sequencing costs is the possibility to remediate some of the damage that humankind has wrought on this planet. With the current sequencing of the genomes of hundreds of diverse species, the emphasis has been on humans and those species that serve as experimental models, sources of human food or adversely affect human and livestock health. However, the emphasis should probably now be placed on those species that are at high risk for extinction.
With the advent of synthetic biology, it is possible to "resurrect" extinct organisms if we know their full genome sequences. Ideally, we should have the complete genomes of many members of the same species. The work by Dr. Schuster and his colleagues for the Tasmanian devil is a step in this direction.
The advantage of a database with the full sequences of thousands of diverse genomes is that it can be easily copied on a wide-scale onto small storage devices. This allows the creation of thousands of 'arks" that can be widely disseminated, even into the cosmos.* This is a lot more efficient that herding animals in pairs on a single wooden ark and hoping for the best. As technology continues to progress and human priorities change, such storage arks of diverse life might be the greatest legacy that we could leave to future generations hundreds or thousands of years from now.
*In principle, such information could even be broadcasted into the universe for reception by other advanced civilizations. They would get quite a surprise when they reconstruct the Tasmanian devil!
Link to the original blog post.