Thanks to Budak for alerting me to this extremely interesting news. It’s so remote a possibility but I wonder if the government would rethink the way we treat cats now.
Partial Cat Genome Sequenced, May Aid Human Medicine
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic NewsOctober 31, 2007
The first “rough draft” genome for the domestic cat has been sequenced by an international team of scientists.
The new sequence is based on the DNA of a four-year-old Abyssinian named Cinnamon, a purebred cat whose lineage can be traced for several generations.
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The female animal yielded about 65 percent of the cat genome, which is now thought to contain 20,285 genes. By contrast, the human genome is believed to hold between 20,000 and 25,000 genes.
“[Cinnamon] ‘volunteered’ to have her genome sequenced so that we could understand [more about] the details of what makes a cat a cat,” said study co-author Stephen O’Brien of the National Cancer Institute’s Laboratory of Genomic Diversity in Frederick, Maryland.
In addition to shedding light on feline evolution, researchers hope that the cat genome may help in the fight against several human diseases.
(Related news: “Macaque Genome Deciphered; May Herald Medical Breakthroughs” [April 12, 2007].)
That’s because the genetic similarities between cats and people make the common feline a good model for medical studies.
Understanding the cat genome may help scientists find the genetic variants that cause diseases such as leukemia and the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa—which Cinnamon currently suffers.
Studies of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, which has a closely related counterpart in cats, may also get a boost from the sequenced genome.
Gene Conservation
Adam Felsenfeld is a researcher with the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Although he was not a study author, his institute was involved with the project.
According to Felsenfeld, the latest cat study—which appears in the current issue of the journal Genome Research—is part of a larger effort to capture rough outlines of 24 new mammal genomes.
Though incomplete, these genetic pictures can show scientists which regions of DNA were conserved across mammalian species as they evolved from a common ancestor.
The partial genomes “can provide an evolutionary perspective on the human genome,” Felsenfeld said.
Compared to other mammals, cats and humans have remained genetically similar to their ancient common ancestor and to each other, study co-author O’Brien said.
“Humans and cats are reflecting pretty much the organization that was [created] a long time ago and subsequently passed down,” he said.
“That’s not the case in dogs or even in gibbons, where chromosome exchanges [over millions of years of evolution] have reshuffled the deck like a card game at a casino.
“So the human and the cat share a remarkable similarity in terms of the order and pattern of the way genes are laid down in chromosomes.”
But Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, said that that the new view of the cat genome isn’t complete enough to draw very many conclusions.
“Parts of [many animal genomes] are actually quite highly duplicated,” he said.
Genomes duplicate naturally, and when they do they increase the potential for mutations to arise.
“These parts [of the genome] are rapidly changing and tend to be very interesting in evolution—[but] you don’t get those unless you do a thorough sequencing job.”
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