painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
The chicken is now an open book.. so to speak.
some interesting finds from the chicken genome.
-humans and chickens share 2.5% of thier DNA
-this indicates that humans and chickens shared an ancestor about 310 million years ago.
-chickens have 1.1 billion base pairs and 20-23,000 genes compaired to humans with 3 billion base pairs and 20-25,000 genes.
-chickens have genes for the growth of scales, teeth and claws that point to a dinosuar ancestor.
-chickens also have a different gene responcible for the formation of Keratin (used for growing hair, fur and feathers) this means that the ability to produce keratin evolved twice.
-also it appears that chickens have a highly deveolped sence of smell, something not expected from the chickens olfactory lobes.
The hopes for the future of this knowledge include helping to prevent avian spread diseases such as Salmonella and other diseases like SARS. It is also hoped that it will help breaders to develop better chickens for our tables.
from Nature news.
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041206/full/041206-8.html
wa:do
some interesting finds from the chicken genome.
-humans and chickens share 2.5% of thier DNA
-this indicates that humans and chickens shared an ancestor about 310 million years ago.
-chickens have 1.1 billion base pairs and 20-23,000 genes compaired to humans with 3 billion base pairs and 20-25,000 genes.
-chickens have genes for the growth of scales, teeth and claws that point to a dinosuar ancestor.
-chickens also have a different gene responcible for the formation of Keratin (used for growing hair, fur and feathers) this means that the ability to produce keratin evolved twice.
-also it appears that chickens have a highly deveolped sence of smell, something not expected from the chickens olfactory lobes.
The hopes for the future of this knowledge include helping to prevent avian spread diseases such as Salmonella and other diseases like SARS. It is also hoped that it will help breaders to develop better chickens for our tables.
from Nature news.
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041206/full/041206-8.html
wa:do