Global DNA Study Reveals Bird’s Genetic Secrets
A recent report from BBC News says that Scientists have been able to sequence and record the genomes (the genetic make-up or ‘code of life’) of bird species from almost every branch of their family tree. The 363 species’ genomes, which include 267 that have been sequenced for the first time, have been catalogued in a paper in the Journal of Nature.
The list features more than 92% of the world’s avian families, revealing the code for things “Darwin was intrigued by and wrote about”, Dr Michael Braun from the Smithsonian Institution told BBC News. From their diversely coloured feathers, to the huge range in body sizes and flight speeds, “it’s all coded for in the genome”, he said. He added that this milestone is “just the beginning”.
The Bird 10,000 Genomes (B10K) Project aims to include genomes from every living bird species. Dr Braun said it was the domestic chicken that was used as the “model species” to study some of the more extreme examples of avian evolution which included how huge flightless birds, like the ostrich, has evolved.
The humble chicken was used as their ‘model species’
“We’ve intensively studied limb development in the chicken,” he said, “and we can apply that to this group of birds called the ratites – birds like the ostrich and emu. With the evolution of flightlessness, there were a lot to changes in the limb anatomy – wings get short, flight feathers become useless, their legs get longer and they lose toes, because they’re running instead of perching. With these resources, you have the detail – the code – of how that happened.”
The project is finding new data on globally threatened species which could be used by conservation geneticists to help reduce the extinction of bird species, especially those with tiny population sizes.
You can read the full article – Dense sampling of bird diversity increases power of comparative genomics – in The Nature Journal
Feng, S., Stiller, J., Deng, Y. et al. Dense sampling of bird diversity increases power of comparative genomics. Nature 587, 252–257 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2873-9