Tiger Weekly - Serving Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

LSU Museum of Natural Science to play major role in genome zoo project

By Charles Nunmaker

In 2003, a major scientific project called the Human Genome Project was completed. This project was a major undertaking in the scientific community, but the finished project produced a complete set of DNA sequences for humans, the E. Coli bacteria, the fruit fly and even the DNA sequence for the lab mouse.

To follow up to the Human Genome Project, the Genome 10K project was started in April to build a genome sequence map of different animal vertebrates. In November, the proposal for the project was published in the "Journal of Heredity", a scientific periodical published by U.K.'s Oxford University. Collectively, 10,000 vertebrate species will have their genetic sequences mapped by the project.

"It is a project to sequence the DNA of the entire genome gene pool," said Fred Sheldon, director of the LSU Museum of Natural Science.

"You know there are billions and billions of nucleotides of ten to fifteen thousand different vertebrates. So right now, we have the entire genome for humans, for the house mouse and for a couple of things like a chicken. But because of the new technology, in the next few years we will be able to sequence all kinds of creatures. Then, by having the entire DNA of all the creatures, we can compare those and learn about evolution and disease patterns."

To help out in the project that started at the University of California at Santa Cruz, the LSU Museum of Natural Science has been chosen to play a major role in the project. Ever since the museum was founded in 1936, it has had a mission to study and collect animal specimens. This mission has brought LSU's Museum of Natural Science to be one of the largest in the country with a collection of over 2.5 million specimens.

"LSU has the world's largest collection of frozen tissues of vertebrates," said Sheldon. "So, this is a collection we started 30 years ago. We have enough animals, you know birds, frogs, turtles, snakes, fish, kangaroos and whatever to provide about half of the species they hope to sequence."

While this project is underway, every participating scientist looks forward to the future of the project and its completion, which will bring new scientific insight to a wide variety of scientific studies.

"First of all, we'll understand a huge amount about the evolution of vertebrates. You know, right now we know pretty well how humans and chimps and gorillas are related to each other and that kind of stuff because we have whole genomes of those creatures, but in this case, we'll have every different thing from a platypus to a human," added Sheldon.

"That'll allow us to understand a huge amount about evolution of the creatures but also about how the genes evolved, which could have medical applications and epidemiological applications."

Originally Published: December 8, 2009

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