Lizard Genome Unveiled
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 - 17:00
in Biology & Nature
Publication of the genome of the North American green anole lizard has filled a yawning genome-sequence gap in the animal lineage. The paper, which appears today in Nature , is the first to sequence the genome of a non-avian reptile. "This fills out a clade that has been completely ignored before," says lead author Jessica Alföldi of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Amniotes, the first truly terrestrial vertebrates, diverged from other animals some 320 million years ago to form the mammalian and reptilian lineages. Until now, however, the only representatives of the reptile branch to be sequenced were birds - the chicken, the turkey and the zebra finch. [More]
