which genome should be sequenced next

the human genome is almost sequenced completely. What animal/plant should we concentrate on next?

I like the idea of a marsupial, since none has been sequenced.

 

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don't think it matters there trying to sequence jsut about everything! thouhg lab and farm animals come first on that list.

 

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Go down the list of recently extinct and endangered animals. Start working on them just so we dont lose them alltogether. Tissue samples dont last forever you know.

You also want to go through various crops and livestock. Genomes are essential if you want to improve something.

Then start going through biologically unique animals and plants or ones that have potentially useful traits you wont find in allready sequenced organisms.

 

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in my opinion, that is tampering with the natural, progressive course of nature . what i mean is, maybe those endangered animals are supposed to become extinct...it's the process of evolution, the weak die out...the strong continue on. we might be in for a big mess on our hands if we start tampering with the intentions of nature itself. and, no, i'm not a tree hugger. i am just against willy, nilly cloning.

 

Aaaah most animals are going extinct because of us not nature.

 

yeah, that might be true, however, that[us "killing-off" animals] also might be involved in the "grand- scheme- of- things" idea/ideal.

 

Well yes we are animals and like all animal we can do what ever we want... in this case kill off all other forms of life so that we can have space to over-populated like rabbits! I hope are successors are a little more merciful towards us then we are towards every other living thing on this planet!

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Pumpkin... Im not proposing this out of altruism. I am proposing it out of greed.

Maybe the animal produces some sort of enzyme that lengthens human life or cures the common cold. Maybe you could bring back the dodo and have them served at KFC.

 

There is no way to observe an environment without disrupting it. I think we should just back off, and let nature take its course, as best it can with us humans around.:m:

 

see now thats the human spirt in action!

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what is?:m:

 

That’s puff the magic dragon, silly!

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money makes the world go around

it costs about 30-100 million to sequence a single species if i am not entirely mistaken. It might be difficult to sequence everything, until the costs go down considerably.


I'm not in the sequence business, but i always wondered which genome they actually sequence, when they say they sequenced the human genomen? did they pick one person? multiple people...who picked them and why?

 

10 people were sequanced by both celera and the US gov.

 

so basically we didn't sequence the human genome, but the genome of 10 people????

 

They were human so yes we did sequence human genomes. No we have not sequence every human genome on earth I don't see how we can with the speed and price of DNA sequencing today. Today’s DNA sequencing machines can sequence 100,000 nucleotides a DAY. There is work on break through machines that will sequence DNA at speeds of up to 200,000 nucleotides a SECOND!!! That is fast enough to do a whole human genome in under 5 hours! When that day comes everyone’s genome will be sequenced!

 

Although improved speed is a good another important breakthrough would be a sequencing machine that could sequence in longer stretches. The 500-1000 bp limit is a serious problem when you have repeat regions of the same scale even when you keep track of clone ends and utilize that info. Currently to sequence a genome you need 12X coverage. And there are often mistakes in the assembly ...

Preserving information on forms of life is a great idea, I think. The importance though is on understanding the organization. Unfortunately there is epigenetic information in how the egg is created, without the correct initial conditions a genome sequence won't do too much.

Even more important is probably maintaining ecosystems. They are an even more complex evolved display of balance and will take even longer to restabilize once disturbed. Unfortuntately many people clearly don't understand balance and don't want to.

Anyways, regarding the original question there are many genomes being sequenced now - Drosophila Psuedoobscura, myriads of bacteria, rat, and I know they're doing a bunch more but it's hard to keep up.

Currently one major aim is to sequence closely related organisms to improve our ability to understand regulatory regions which evolve more quickly than coding regions. My bias would be many flavors of Drosophila, but that's partially because it's what I'm working on ... of course I'm working on it because I think regulation is interesting and it's the best system - though not as medically important as mouse or rat.

edit - that might not be clear. I mean promoters/enhancers/silencers - DNA regulatory regions in front of genes. Not regions of proteins important in regulation. And not DNA regualtory regions important in splicing/alternative splicing. Though I almost worked on splicing - it's really cool too. Networks and differentiation/patterning are just too cool though.

 

but i gather that the drosophila genome was sequenced based on some inbred line.

Someone just mentioned to me that one of the humans that was sequenced was actually the director of the sequencing company. How representative is that for the human genome. Or does it even matter which individual is sequenced?

 

D. melanogaster was an inbred line - that makes sense from the standpoint that the inbred line is the one that's a model organism. I'm actually not sure if psuedoobscura is inbred or not. Do you really think that invalidates the utility?

The mouse genome which was sequenced was inbred also. The fact of the matter is that a MAJOR useful part of genomic sequence is in the practical issues of laboratory science. And if one wants to be able to interpret the information in a genome a lot of detailed mechanistic studies have to be done at the system level. Hence model organisms - and if you want to do genetics, inbred model organisms (and genetics is still a very important part of most true in vivo molecular biology).

The 10 people was only Celera, and one was Craig Venter. Yes he is an ego maniac. He gave a talk at our school and showed a photo of him standing at the podium w/the presidential logo and the president seated looking up at him in the intro of his talk. While he isn't too impressive in the area of mechanistic science, he does do a good job in coming up with technological approaches that are useful. He also "invented" EST sequencing. He's no longer with Celera. (EDIT - though come to think of it most of his approaches are based on the brute force method - not super elegant. Most of the elegance in the approach of sequencing he took came from Gene Myers who wrote the assembler)

The rational for using 10 people was to locate SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), they didn't sequence all 10 individually. They took sequence from all 10 and assembled it together. I've never looked into it myself, but supposedly there are only local and not large scale differences in genomic organization.

 

Maybe my menory is faulty, but didn't they pick 10 people as possibles, then select 5 of those to do the actual sequecing? And, yes, Ventor was one of the 10. Hell, if I ran the show, I'd sure put my DNA in there.

Humans are supposed to be 99.9% similiar genetically. It's estimated we have something like 30k-50k genes. Pckc anyone at random and you'll only be off by 30 or 50 genes (.1% of total).

Personally, I'd like to see a chimp genome decoded. Then we could really do some interesting comparisons. Practically, though, it would make sense to go down the list of lab animals that are commonly used. Mouse and Fly are already done, no? So, probably some primate should be next. Hey, if we could find some complete Neanderthal DNA, how about sequencing that?