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Platypus Genome Decoded
TaeKwonDood writes "Is it reptile, bird or mammal? Some of each. Does it have venom, lay eggs and lactate? Yes. Upon discovery in 1798, fellow scientists thought it was for an episode of 'Thou hast been Punk'd,' but this Australia native, on home on land and in water, is real and, finally, it gets its own decoded genome. It's no surprise the DNA is as messed up as the critter itself."
also reported by the ABC http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/08/2238461.htm on a personal note, a platypus is really interesting to watch in the wild. it's movement is quite lizardlike.
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home!
Everybody thinks it's just ducky until they get the bill.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Calling the Platypus a "messed up" animal is one thing, but comparing it to an Ashton Kutcher show is just uncalled for.
National Geographic most likely.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Strangely, the DNA strands seem to spell out THCTHCTHCTHCTHC repeated a hundred million times.
why can't i buy platypus cheese?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I had just recently learned that they also had poisonous barbs on their back feet. What is surprising that it is one of the most painful venoms on the planet. A gentleman that had been stuck by a platypus had also been struck by shrapnel in World War II.
He said if he had to choose between the two, it would be the grenade.
So the cute little bastards are also very dangerous. I still want to pick one up and hug them though.
Intelligent Design, meet Platypus.
...
Platypus, meet Intelligent Design.
Maybe there is a God, maybe not -- but would any sane being *design* something like this??
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
... and how do I compile it ?
I would totally design something like... oh... wait...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Interesting indeed... I vaguely recall some debate when sequencing the platypus was proposed, over whether or not it was a worthy use of funding and sequencer time, being that it was not considered a representative of any medically or commercially important organism, or one of the various "model" laboratory organisms.
Anyway, saw a comment posted as a reply to a Nature article on it which also suggested we take a look at "other 'outlier' organisms, including the echidna, birds like the kiwi or tinamous, tuataras, nautilus, and similar organisms." Sounds like a good idea -- here's hoping we see sequence data from other living fossil organisms.
I tried to compile it, and all I got was a segmentation fault.
We told you it was real. Now we just have to decode the Bunyip genome.
Now that their DNA has been decoded, we will find out why platypuses are such powerful sorcerers.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
This is, of course, all just theory.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Actually platypodes and platypuses are acceptable plurals for onithorhynchus anatinus.
Just don't call a Greek policeman a platypus, even if it is etymologically correct. They get irritated easily.
-- John Dierdorf, Austin TX
Us Greeks just call them pigs, idiots, stupid motherfuckers or flower-pots because they bang peoples heads against flower pots and beds
*still hurting from last week's protest*
----
If that's not from _A Sunburned Country_, it sounds just like it. Great book!
Lived in Melbourne as a kid. Great people, beautiful country.
In all honesty, that one isn't surprising. In Australia, if it doesn't have big serrated teeth, it can probably paralyze you with a single bite.
And mammals don't lay eggs or come with poison spines, but when has that ever stopped the platypus before?
I could never decide as a kid whether the platypus disproved intelligent design (I mean, come on, look at it) or whether it was just God's grand joke. "Suck on this, natural selection. I wonder how I can make something LESS plausible. Oh, needs more poison spines... and a beaver tail. Oh, and just to top it off, I'm going to stealth mod them with electrolocation so after the humans can actually detect that they'll just go 'Oh WTF no you didn't'. Its good being omnipotent."
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
The source code is shipped with every binary and in selected models you get a complete self-hosted build environment at no extra charge. The user interface is a bit rough, and compile time is pretty high, but it definitely complies with the GPL.
All platypus jokes aside, I for one am surprised to see that the platypus genome was completed. Not long ago scientists were remarking at how difficult it would be, considering the platypus has something like 10 sex chromosomes.
Add to that the fact that there aren't that many of them, in captivity or in the wild, and they generally prefer to stay away from us, and you get a rather difficult task just trying to get platypus DNA.
And of course, that also leave the question of what to build the genome from. Generally, when new genomes are built, other genomes are used for scaffolding, as a sort of guide for where genes might fall, how large they might be, etc... But then what organisms should be used for scaffolding when assembling the genome of an egg-laying mammal?
This is quite an accomplishment, I'd say. As someone who previously worked on plant genomics, I tip my hat to these scientists for their work.
And for those who have access to the journal Nature, here are the important links:
Abstract (should be accessible to everyone)
Full Text, HTML (subscribers)
Full Text, PDF (subscribers)
Editor's Summary (maybe for everyone?)
Supplementary Information (subscribers)
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Batzer is one of the researchers. He should know that in the standard evolutionary phylogenetic model, the platypus is no more closely related to birds than we are, since we and platypodes share a common ancestor that existed in the mammalian line after the mammalian line separated from birds.
While it is true that to a human a platypus looks more like a bird than does another human, it is equally true that to a platypus a human looks more like a bird than does another platypus.
And the implication that classifying it as a mammal is a mistake ("even though it is indeed classified as a mammal", rather than "even though it's a mammal") is just silly.
The 1999 Ford Taurus gets it's features from nature's platypus design. Thick in the middle, tapered on both ends, and (4) five spoke rubbery components for motion.
Click for yourself:
Platypus
1999 Ford Taurus
I know it's strange, but I just had to go on-line and check out anagrams of "platypus." I was surprised to find that there were 42 including:
Splat Yup
Aptly Sup
Salty Pup
Lusty Pap
Stay Pulp
At Sly Pup
And my favorite: At Supply as in: Where did the platypus come from? There must have been a mix-up At Supply.
Invenio via vel creo
I double checked. It was en.wikipedia.org but it sure looked like Greek to me!
Invenio via vel creo