Author: Tina Hesman Saey / Source: Science News for Students
What’s the news? Researchers have now pieced together the genetic instruction books of koalas. The furry marsupials [mar-SOOP-ee-uhls] join a growing collection of creatures with fully sequenced genomes.
Marsupials are mammals with pouches and include kangaroos, wombats and opossums. Marsupial mothers feed their tiny babies in those pouches after they’re born. The large group of researchers published their koala findings online July 2 in Nature Genetics.Why do we care? Lots of people love koalas. Many people travel to Australia each year to see them. Those visitors bring in $1.1 billion (in Australian dollars) every year, according to the government of New South Wales, a state in Australia. But fewer koalas are surviving in the wild. What is in their genome could give scientists ideas about how to save them.
Already, scientists knew that koalas in some groups have more similar genes than koalas in other groups. (Animal groups with more gene differences are usually healthier.) Hills, rivers and other barriers can keep groups of animals apart. Animals that can’t mix often with others often have more similar genes.
Scientists also already knew that Australia’s Brisbane Valley and the Clarence River separated koala groups. The new work shows that the Hunter Valley is a barrier, too. Knowing which groups can’t mix as easily will help biologists. They can design new ways to keep koala genomes diverse.
How many genes does a koala have? 26,558. That’s almost twice as many as researchers had counted before. New techniques allowed scientists find more genes.
Is that a lot?…
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