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Sci Tech
Deciphering human genome made easy
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The pufferfish Fugu genome is 1/8 the size of our human genome but has a similar complement of genes. Hence finding genes in the Fugu genome should be easy and can help identify the same elements in the human genome.
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A SUBSTANTIAL short cut to the important information embedded in human genome has been taken by an international research consortium with the completion of a draft sequence of genome of the Japanese pufferfish Fugu rubripes.
The Fugu draft sequence was announced at the 13th International Genome Sequencing and Analysis Conference in California. Although the Fugu genome contains the same genes and regulatory sequences as the human genome, it carries those genes and regulatory sequences in almost 365 million bases as compared to 3 billion bases that make up human DNA.
With far less so-called ``junk DNA''to sort through, finding genes and controlling sequences in the Fugu genome should be an easier task. The information can be used to identify the same elements in the human genome. This Fugu draft sequence is the first public assembly of an animal genome by the whole genome shotgun sequencing method. ``All organisms are related,'' said Trevor Hawkins, Director of the Joint Genome Institute. ``Although the Fugu genome is only one-eighth the size of our human genome, it has a similar complement of genes. Yet we know very little about the structure of those genes and how they are turned on and off.
That's why we're sequencing genomes of microbes, sea squirts and now Fugu-because these comparative genomics programs are key to understanding the biology of the human genome.'' A whole genome shotgun strategy was employed to sequence the Fugu genome. ``We first chopped the genome up into pieces that are small enough to sequence,'' said Dan Rokhsar, Associate Director for Computational Genomics at the JGI. ``The challenge was then to reassemble the genome by putting together nearly four million of these overlapping fragments-in the same w ay that you'd put together a giant jigsaw puzzle.'' Solving this puzzle was made possible by a new computational algorithm, JAZZ, that has been developed at JGI to handle large genome sequencing projects.
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