Scientists Map DNA of Rhesus Monkeys

KingKong writes "Scientists have unraveled the DNA of another of our primate relatives, this time a monkey named the rhesus macaque — and the work has far more immediate impact than just to study evolution. These fuzzy animals are key to testing the safety of many medicines, and understanding such diseases as AIDS, and the new research will help scientists finally be sure when they're a good stand-in for humans. 'Having a third primate will allow scientists to compare the three genomes, with an added emphasis on singling out the genes possessed by humans alone. The end goal is to reconstruct the history of every single one of the approximately 20,000 genes, to determine when they first appeared in history, and in what species. All of this requires an extraordinary amount of information.'"

Re:but first.

[Red Flayer]

say, 10 male, 10 female, those with a preponderance of posts on slashdot vs those who do not?

But sir, you repeat yourself. ;)

Besides, what good is it to map the DNA of those who aren't contributing to the gene pool? ;P

Seriously, though, if we wanted to map variation in human DNA, we'd need far more than 20 samples. Here [wikipedia.org]'s some info that might interest you -- it's an effort headquartered at Stanford to map the 1% of the human genome that differentiates human populations from eachother.

The research papers on which the story is based

[alisonchilla]

If you're interested in the nitty-gritty details, go to http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/macaque/ [sciencemag.org] . The entire special issue, including the research articles, is free for all.

And if you're not into reading scientific papers, there is an "interactive poster" with videos for the common man.

From the website
"In the 13 April 2007 issue, Science unveils the genome sequence of one of biology's most important model organisms -- the rhesus macaque monkey (Macaca mulatta). In Science, a Research Article and four Reports, as well as two News stories, detail the biomedical and evolutionary insights gained from the macaque genome, only the third primate genome to be completed after human and chimpanzee. Online, an interactive poster enhanced with images, discussions, and videos explores the significance of the rhesus macaque and its draft genome sequence to studies of primate biology and evolution. Accompanying the online feature is an educational resource for high school biology teachers, which includes teacher background information, a lesson plan, and student worksheet."

(sorry if this has already been mentioned. I checked but didn't see it)