'Most sequencing technologies only produce short stretches of sequence at a time.

'Vertebrate genomes are big, and they contain many repetitive sequences,' explained Pollard, who is also a professor at UCSF and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator. The study, which was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution and released on BioRxiv as a preprint with a data repository, provides an extremely high-quality sequence of the Komodo dragon genome, which can now be used as a reference in efforts to sequence other vertebrate genomes. Mendelson III, PhD, a herpetologist and evolutionary vertebrate biologist, and the director of research at Zoo Atlanta. 'This project was a great opportunity for us to learn more about Komodo dragons using the newest and best technologies, and then be able to contribute our findings toward the general knowledge of lizard biology,' said Joseph R. The team studied the DNA of two Komodo dragons from Zoo Atlanta named Slasher and Rinca, whose blood samples were obtained as part of their scheduled annual check-ups. We didn't even have a human genome at that time!' 'I never would have guessed then that I would one day work on their genome. 'I went to Komodo Island years ago as a tourist, and I saw Komodo dragons in the wild there,' said Katherine Pollard, PhD, a senior investigator and the director of the Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology, who is the other senior author of the study. 'At the time, other groups had sequenced the turtle genome, snake and bird genomes, and the crocodile genome was in process, but the missing branch was the varanid lizards - the family to which Komodo dragons belong.'

'We started the project 9 years ago to look at how genomes evolve, but to do so, we needed the genome sequences first,' said Gladstone Senior Investigator Benoit Bruneau, PhD, a senior author of the study. Now, a new study from researchers at the Gladstone Institutes, in a close collaboration with scientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF) and Zoo Atlanta, provides the first high-resolution sequence of the Komodo dragon, as well as insight into how it evolved.

2019 comodo dragon reviews