Chicken Genome Sequenced

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.

Comments

chickens diverging from mammals?

[kendoka]

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...

Re:chickens diverging from mammals?

[Acy James Stapp]

Mammals are descended from cynodonts from therapsids (mammal-like reptiles) which descended from the synapsid reptiles, which descended from the early amniotes.

Birds are descended from theropods, one of the two groups of saurischian dinosaurs, from archosaurs, which descend from the diapsid reptiles, from amniotes. Notable theropods are the raptors, tyrannosaurus, and allosaurus, and of course, aves.

The sauropods also descended from the saurischian dinosaurs. Notable here are the thecodonts, brachisaurus, and diplodicus.

The ornithician dinosaurs descended from archosaurs as well. Notable here are ankylosaurus, stegosaurus, iguanadon, etc.

Other ancient lineages are the turtles (from anapsids, from amniotes), crocodilians (from the archosaurs), and modern reptiles and snakes (from diapsids).

Big Money. The goal is no wings and smaller talons

[human bean]

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:I doubt it...

[Otter]

"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.