Source: rhamphothecaMapping the Genomes of Crocodilians Is Not for the Faint of Heart
by Miles O’Brien and Marsha Walton
David Ray never turns his back on his research, and with good reason! “If it can’t bite you, it’s not interesting,” he jokes.
Ray and his team study alligators, crocodiles, bats and flies, among other creatures. There’s no handbook for learning how to capture an alligator or a crocodile. “Oh, it’s great. I mean, there’s just a thrill,” says Ray, an evolutionary biologist at Mississippi State University (MSU).
With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), this multidisciplinary team from several universities is mapping crocodile and alligator genomes. Reptiles resembling these animals have existed for around 80 million years and they are among the first reptiles to have their DNA sequenced. The research could expand our knowledge well beyond crocodilians to other reptiles, birds, and even dinosaurs.
“Birds and crocodiles, though you wouldn’t think it from looking at them, are each other’s closest existing relative,” notes Ray.
“The group currently assembled by David Ray and others includes scientists with expertise ranging from crocodilian systematics and population genetics to pure molecular biology to the fields of bioinformatics and comparative genomics,” explains Lou Densmore, chair of the Biological Sciences Department at Texas Tech University…
(read more: PhysOrg) (image: Gianfranco Lanzetti)
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Provided by National Science Foundation
