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Biotech

Chicken Genome Sequenced 107

Posted by michael from the cluck-cluck dept.
Jonmann writes "The chicken (Gallus gallus) genome has been sequenced by the International Chicken Genome Sequencing Consortium. The new genome map provides new, more detailed clues as to how birds diverged from mammals in the course of evolution." I, for one, welcome our new 5-foot-tall, all-white-meat, pre-coated-with-tasty-batter chicken overlords.
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Chicken Genome Sequenced More

Chicken Genome Sequenced

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  • I think that the genome in general is so confusing and complicated that we only *think* we have it mapped.

    In 1k years, people will be laughing at the ignorance of today's genetic scientists.

    FP
    • I assure you that genomes are, in fact, "mapped" within the bounds of what that term implies. (Determining the nucleotide sequences of chromosomes, with some low percentage of gaps.) Undoubtedly there are going to be vast improvements in the understanding of what those sequences and the rest of the cell machinery do, but that's the question for which the mapping is a tool. No one is claiming that that process is anywhere but the begining.
      • To clarify: sequencing != mapping. We have the human genome, and the chicken genome, and a few others, sequenced; a sequence is often compared to a map without any labels. "Mapping" the genome involves putting labels on the things on the map. A map without labels isn't really all that useful by itself, but it's a place to start.

        • Re:I doubt it... (Score:3, Informative)

          by Otter ( 3800 )
          "Mapping", in the context of genomics, refers to the generation of orientation frameworks to specify physical and recombinational locations. That step precedes sequencing, or at least precedes sequence assembly. The maps we have today are extremely unlikely to change substantively.

          You can quibble over whether it is an appropriate term, but that's the sense in which the word has been used for nearly a century and in which it's used today.

          • By the way -- nitpickers may note that I've defined the word two different ways. The former was a response to the original poster in the terms in which I understood him to be speaking; the second was a technical definition in response to a technical objection. Mea culpa, but it doesn't affect the point.
    • How do you think we'll get to that level in 1000 years if we don't study and make mistakes now? Do people belittle Aristotle, even though he was often wrong? Great science is built on the back of others work, both right and wrong.
    • I'd just like to archive a note to all those thousand-year-from-now people laughing at us

      "Oh bite me, you come back here and see how easy it is."

      That's all.

  • 5-foot-tall overlords (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @01:11PM (#11044026) Homepage Journal
    I, for one, welcome our new 5-foot-tall, all-white-meat, pre-coated-with-tasty-batter chicken overlords.

    I'm waiting for meat animals without heads or brains, so you can eat meat without the animals having to live unpleasent cruel lives. I love meat, but I feel really bad for the animals.
    • so you can eat meat without the animals having to live unpleasent cruel lives

      This is exactly why I became vegan. I began to notice that I was preventing myself from thinking about where my food came from (it turns out it was from factory farms); at one point, it became easier to become vegan than it was to ignore these thoughts.

      Fortunately, the love for meat disappears quickly in most of the ethical vegetarians and vegans who I know. (Ethical, as opposed to people who become vegetarian or vegan for rel

      • Re:5-foot-tall overlords (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Well, you can always raise your own or buy livestock and kill them yourself. I like meat and wouldn't mind having to kill it myself. I've severely reduced my meat intake due to the factory farms feeding all that antibiotics, hormones, and starlink feed.

        I only buy organic eggs(The shells are thicker - anyone else noticed that there's no longer any grade AAA eggs and only grade AA eggs in the supermakets since the mid to late nineties) and chickens. Most of my beef are from Niman Ranch. I buy lamb, since
        • Even though we fall on opposite sides of the 'animals as food' debate, I very much respect your position. It is consistent and well-thought out. It's too bad you posted as an Anonymous Coward.

          If I were to consider eating animals again, a highly improbable event, I think I would need to adopt your approach.
      • Plants have the right to live too you know.

        There are also environmental consequences to being a vegetarian/vegan (though minimized or eliminated if you grow your own without using pesticides and chemical fertilizers).

        If everyone was vegan on an overpopulated planet, we'd turn the place into a dustball pretty quick too.

        I choose to assume responsibility for what I am. Omnivorous. I eat what's available.
        • Plants have the right to live too you know.

          I'll be sure to think about that next time I take the life of a soy bean in cold blood. That's my rule: if I can kill it, I'll eat it.

          There are also environmental consequences to being a vegetarian/vegan

          This is certainly true. However, since I'm a primary consumer and not a secondary consumer, I consume much less than an omnivore consuming a herbivore consuming plants consumes. In other words, if I ate as many plants as the chicken and cows you eat do, yo
        • "There are also environmental consequences to being a vegetarian/vegan (though minimized or eliminated if you grow your own without using pesticides and chemical fertilizers)."

          Most serious vegetarians are aware of this. I don't see how it stands as an argument against vegetarianism though. There is no such thing as a diet with zero footprint on the environment. But in general, for those of us living in the modern world who get food from modern sources, a true vegetarian diet is better on the environment t

        • There are also environmental consequences to being a vegetarian/vegan (though minimized or eliminated if you grow your own without using pesticides and chemical fertilizers).

          Or buy organically grown foods. Unfortunately, they're usually, if not always, a bit more expensive, but they're grown without the pesticides and chemical fertilizers you mention.

          Off-topic thought to self: I love it when Hy-Vee (for those who don't know, that's a midwestern U.S. grocery store--you can't go to a "big" town out here

    • you can eat meat without the animals having to live unpleasent cruel lives

      I feel the same way. The lives these farm raised animals live bothers me more than they have to die for my consumption. I don't eat a lot of meat, but I can't see cutting it out completely.

      It confuses me when fellow meat eaters are repulsed by hunting, even if the hunter plans on eating his kill. Seems to me a free life cut short by a swift death is preferrable to short life crammed in a cage. I had a suitemate in college who d

    • I'm waiting for meat animals without heads or brains

      So you're waiting for Mike, the Headless Chicken [mikethehea...hicken.org]. Don't know how pleasant life without a head really was for the critter.

  • The what? (Score:5, Funny)

    by sarlen ( 836953 ) <sarlen@mmode.com> on Thursday December 09, 2004 @01:19PM (#11044157) Homepage
    International Chicken Genome Sequencing Consortium

    Does that make anyone else scratch their head and wonder what other kind of downright stupid consortiums we have? I mean it's a noble cause, no doubt, but calling it a consortium feigns a certain amount of dignity to chicken research that I'm not prepared to give.

    • Chicken research is *extremely* important. Chicken is one of the most energy-efficient, cheap-to-produce forms of livestock meat, if not *the* most.

      Don't be silly, please. There is a lot of hungry people living in the same planet as you. Any way of feeding them without hurting the wilderness areas would be nice.
      • Since we eat a lot of chicken you deem is appropriate this group be labeled a consortium?
      • While chickens may be the most 'energy-efficient, cheap-to-produce forms of livestock meat' available, eating chickens who eat plants is still much less energy effecient then eating the plants directly.

        Chickens are heterotrophs, and so must rely on plants for food. However, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, these primary consumers are only able to extract a fraction of the energy that plants have stored. Secondary consumers introduce another level of inefficiency.

        From Why Vegan [whyvegan.org]

        'Yet anothe
        • The typical North American diet, with its large share of animal products, requires twice as much water to produce as the less meat-intensive diets common in many Asian and some European countries.

          I call BS on this. I just returned from a one month long trip in Asia, and there are way more "meat" restaurants than vegetarian/vegan ones.

          At some point, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, my friends and I got so tired of constantly eating meat-rich meals, we had to search long and hard for vegetarian fare.
          • Interesting. I've never been to Asia, so I'm not qualified to converse on the number of meat or vegetarian restaurants. I was under the impression that, in many other countries, the meat is a complement to the meal. For instance, maybe a meal would consist of mostly rice and seaweed, with a portion of meat along side it.

            My co-workers (one Chinese, one Indian) just came back from trips to their home countries. Both seem to agree that the portions are inverted in their home countries, so that meat is les
            • I was under the impression that, in many other countries, the meat is a complement to the meal. For instance, maybe a meal would consist of mostly rice and seaweed, with a portion of meat along side it.

              A Korean friend of mine was telling me awhile ago that that's exactly how it used to be over there a few hundred years ago. Originally, Korean food was mostly vegan, but the Western influence got them adding side bits of meat. Now, they mix it in wholesale.

              Friend++ for the rest of your posts attached to th
            • The number of restaurants is not the best property to compare on. Meat is relatively expensive and most of the world tune their meat intake based on cost, but if you go to a restaurant, you have money to spare.

              In some places, you might even have trouble getting them to make meatless food. Since the concept of ethical vegetarianism is unknown, they might throw in some chicken just to be nice.

              And just forget trying to make them lay off the broth and fish sauce.
        • From Why Vegan

          Some of these arguments have merit, maybe you should find more recent data, though - The latest date I see anything referenced from is 2002, and a few things from 1993-1997.

          There's a lot of other sites out there that can provide counter-arguments better than I can, so I won't get into that.

          Some estimates put the acreage requirements for a vegan diet at 1/12th those of an omnivorous diet.

          First of all, my apologies, as i'm going to rant a bit here. If you are a vegan or vegetarian and you
          • "If a lot of other vegans weren't so dammned overbearing about following that lifestyle, it would be a lot more attractive."

            As a vegan, I totally agree with you. Your neighbor sounds like a smug uptight asshole.

            "That pretty much sums up the experiences i've had with 99% of the vegetarians/vegans i've ever met"

            Fine, but please be careful not to let that influence your actions too heavily against the vegetarian you meet tomorrow.
          • Your neighbor sounds like a jerk. (Smoking tobacco doesn't sound very vegan, either; it does not reflect care for himself, and, if he can't care for himself, it must be harder to care for others.) At the very least, he could be consistent and understand that many non-smokers abhor the smell of smoke as much, if not more, than many vegetarians abhor the smell of cooked flesh.

            It's very unfortunate that your neighbor does not seem to understand that veganism is essentially about reducing the amount of suffe
            • Thanks much. I suppose I shouldn't have really gone off like that, but it felt good to get that out of my system. I'll be moving at the beginning of March, so one way or another I won't have to deal with it anymore.

              Further, just like any other group, there's always some bad apples - rest assured that I know there's caring people like you out there as well :)

              At any rate...I have pretty much no hope of changing my meat-eating ways, but i'm always looking for interesting new stuff to browse and learn about,
        • I don't have anything against vegans or even the second law of thermodynamics but I have with your argument.
          According to the same law you state, why don't you just eat dirt and glare at the sun ?
          The fact that some energy was necessarily lost in the first process (grain->chicken) says nothing about wether you'll get more energy from one source or another.
          How much energy are you able to take from grain ?
          How much are you able to take from chicken meat ?
          How much energy will require your kid to process
          • If I could eat dirt and glare at the sun, I just might. However, I'm not an autotroph, and so, if I wish to live, I have two choices: I must consume things which produce their own food, or I must consume things who consume other things which produce their own food.

            More energy was consumed by the plants that I eat than I derive from the plants. More energy was consumed by the chicken you ate than you derive from the chicken. Look up "trophic levels" and "energy pyramids" on google and you'll see what I m
      • Chicken is one of the most energy-efficient, cheap-to-produce forms of livestock meat, if not *the* most.

        I'm no animal rights activist, but if we are really concerned with nutritional efficieny, we should skip the middle man and feed the starving masses the grains, etc., that the chickens would be getting.

        • And to the other guys that answered my post.

          I am a carnivore (an omnivore really). I mean I, me, personally. I have canine teeth (ok, and I have nails that are made to open fruits).

          I am in the top of the chain food -- barring the worms I'll feed 100+ years from now. And I don't feel bad or unethical about that. My problem with being vegetarian/vegan is the protein. The (poor) people of my country survive (barely) on a diet of rice and (brown) beans. Meat here is expensive (chicken is cheaper, but beef/por
          • It may be true in your country that a nutritionally sufficient vegetarian diet is difficult to follow; I'm not familiar enough with Brazil to make any claim otherwise. I do know that, in general, this is not the case.

            I need meat to feel OK

            This attitude is not unique to Brazil; many of my friends from the Midwest express this sentiment, too. One friend even claims she can tell when she's 'low on protein.' In the United States, insufficient protein consumption is not typically a problem: as usual for m
      • Insects are a much more energy efficient source of meat. Sure, people might be squeamish now, but sell them ground up, give them a fancy name, and pay some celebrities to publicly eat them, and you've got the meat of the future.
    • I am not sure if you are simply joking or are just curiously amused. But the name is quite on-the-mark describing what it is, and also follows a naming "tradition": The natural name variants have been used for at least human, mouse, rat, chimp, malaria, fugu, and a slew of more pathetic lifeforms.
    • Just think of the dinner conversation you could start by telling everyone that you're a member of the International Chicken Genome Sequencing Consortium!
      • Just think of the dinner conversation you could start by telling everyone that you're a member of the International Chicken Genome Sequencing Consortium!

        Me: Mom, Dad! I'm now a member of the International Chicken Genome Sequencing Consortium!

        Dad: Robotic chickens will never rule me! WE DO BATTLE!

  • all WHITE meat? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson@psg. c o m> on Thursday December 09, 2004 @01:22PM (#11044195)
    hmm all WHITE meat from the WHITE chicken farmers? who may one day visit the WHITE house? Huh. I see how you are.

    I for one welcome our DARK meat 8 foot tall DARK feathered chickens, with the crushing toes and the beak and the poking and the crushing and the hey hey it hurts me.
  • Great. Now if we could just figure out how limestone came from tree bark and why the sun diverged from the Pacific...

  • Question (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 09, 2004 @01:38PM (#11044374)

    Q: How do you know when a joke has jumped the shark?

    A: When even the Slashdot editors are making it!

    Come on, they don't even read the site! It's like when your parents start using a slang term, you automatically realise that it's no longer cool.

  • Can we eventually inject chicken genes into a soy bean so we can make tofu taste like chicken?

  • chickens diverging from mammals? (Score:3, Informative)

    by kendoka ( 473386 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @02:02PM (#11044644)
    My bio's a little rusty but aren't chickens in the aves (family? order? whatever? =)) Aves didn't descend from mammals. Aves and mammals share a common ancestor in perhaps the dinosaurs...
    • I think it was a case of the language in the article summary above being a bit vague. It should've said "how mammals and birds diverged from their common ancestor" -- at least that's what the article says.

      Oh, and the mammal/bird common ancestor predates the dinosaurs, FYI.
    • Not to be pedantic, but everything shares a common ancestor. From humans to birds to dinosaurs to bacteria. It all came from the same organism.

  • Big Money. The goal is no wings and smaller talons (Score:4, Informative)

    by human bean ( 222811 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @02:09PM (#11044717)
    And possibly no feathers.

    A commercial chicken's purpose in life (if you can call it living) is to eat and produce eggs, meat, or more chickens.

    When you farm chickens, the goal is to get as much non-human-consumable protein and carbohydrate into salable form as possible. Feathers, beaks, feet, and less desireable parts need to be minimized in order to fulfill the goal.

    Gene-spliced chickens can solve some of this, producing more usable foodstuff.

    The previous solution, however, was to simply have the USDA regulate that ALL parts of a chicken are "chicken". Remember that the next time you eat a chicken nugget.

    • Re:Big Money. The goal is no wings and smaller tal (Score:4, Funny)

      by b-baggins ( 610215 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @02:44PM (#11045143) Journal
      ---
      A commercial chicken's purpose in life (if you can call it living) is to eat and produce eggs, meat, or more chickens.
      ---

      Exactly. Whereas a chicken's purpose in the wild is to eat, produce eggs, more chicken and feed foxes.

      The commercial exploitation of chickens is absolutely horrible.
    • The previous solution, however, was to simply have the USDA regulate that ALL parts of a chicken are "chicken". Remember that the next time you eat a chicken nugget.

      The questionable contents of chicken isn't exactly a secret. Can't remember the last time I bit into a chicken breast and had something go crunch.

      I am more afraid to think about what is in sausage though, especially down here in the Southeastern U.S. Pig's feet and ears are on display for sale in the grocery store, so what parts do they try

    • Here's something else to consider the next time you eat a chicken nugget:

      Meat, as defined in 9 CFR 301.2(rr):

      (1) The part of the muscle of any cattle, sheep, swine, or goats, which is skeletal or which is found in the tongue, or in the diaphragm, or in the heart, or in the esophagus, with or without the accompanying and overlying fat, and the portions of bone, skin, sinew, nerve, and blood vessels which normally accompany the muscle tissue and which are not separated from it in the process of dressin

    • When you farm chickens, the goal is to get as much

      non-human-consumable protein and carbohydrate into salable form as possible. Feathers, beaks, feet, and less desireable parts need to be minimized in order to fulfill the goal.

      Emphasis mine.

      Oooh, how much ambiguity can the English language introduce ...

      1) non-human, consumable --> not from human sources, consumable

      2) non human-consumable --> not consumable by humans

      3) non-human-consumable --> consumble by non-humans OR not of humans but c

    • Why would the need talons at all? They are raised on farms in protected environments (except for the occasional fox). They could be engineered to have the absolute minimum of unedible parts.

    • The big money goal, if we're allowed to be futuristic, is to use biotech to allow chicken breast meat to be grown in vats.

      These would have to be sterile to start with, and engineered to avoid the need for too many hormones; hence the result should be far more '(nasty)chemical free' than battery chicken.

      It would also be more vegan than crop plants, since wild animals have to be killed to protect crops, but obviously not to grow meat in vats.

      It's a pipe dream at the moment... but if we are ever going to g

  • Gallus Gallus? (Score:3, Funny)

    by DamienMcKenna ( 181101 ) <damienNO@SPAMmc-kenna.com> on Thursday December 09, 2004 @02:12PM (#11044754)
    The chicken (Gallus gallus)

    Shouldn't that be Bokkus bokkus?

    Damien
  • This accomplishment fulfills an important Cibo Matto [wbr.com] mandate. You got to "Know Your Chicken [lyricsfreak.com]."

  • But let me guess... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Telastyn ( 206146 ) on Thursday December 09, 2004 @03:58PM (#11046006)
    They still do not know what came first.
  • Didn't KFC have this mastered years ago? To the point where they had to take the word Chicken out of their company name becasue what they sold was so genetically modified that it didn't count as a species of chicken anymore?

  • This reminds me of an article Penn Jillette [pennandteller.com] wrote in Jan 1992 for PC/Computing... which he has so graciously put up on his webserver here [pennandteller.com].
  • Does it solve the chicken or egg question?

  • On the use of the chicken genome (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lars Arvestad ( 5049 ) on Friday December 10, 2004 @03:45AM (#11049663) Homepage Journal
    Several posters seem to assume that the main objective of having the chicken genome available is to make better and cheaper food products. There is of course some truth to that, but there are also other advantages.

    Through domestication and long time (traditional) breeding, the farm chicken has become quite frail and there are several genetic dispositions for problematic conditions for chickens. Knowing its genome could help breeding (both traditional and more modern directed) generate a healthier bird. It is worth noting the man's best fried, the dog, also has these problems due to breeding.

    The sequenced genome is actually from the wild Red Jungle fowl [genome.gov], and not the domestic chicken, so there will be plenty of "healthy genome" to learn from.

    For scientists, finally having a bird genome is also great. It is further away from chimp, mouse, rat, dog, and other "close" genomes, while closer than, say, fly and nematode. It lands somewhere between us and fish, of which we today have something like three genomes (zebrafish, fugu, and tetraodon). A goal for choosing species to sequence today is having a good and even species sampling to make what is called comparative genomics better materials for comparisons. A nice resource for genomics of higher organisms is Ensembl [ensembl.org], where you can get a glimpse of some of the more interesting animal genomes available.

  • I thought they'd found the gene for cowadice actually.

  • why (Score:1)

    by witte ( 681163 )
    Well then, now that we have the chicken dna, could somebody please explain why the chicken crossed the road ?
  • Chickens and birds in general have less junk-DNA than mammals. The reason for this, is to save some weight and make the flying easier. A little bit of DNA in billions of cells, actually adds up to some percent of the total body-weight.

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