A recent cover story in New Zealand Geographic vividly details the efforts to sequence not just the kākāpō genome, but the genomes of every single living kākāpō. If you missed our earlier blog about this bird, the kākāpō is a member of the parrot family known for its unique attributes: it’s heavy, flightless, and mostly active at night. As author Rebekah White reports in “Decoding Kākāpō,” the remaining members of this species — about 125 of them — live on islands near New Zealand. White recounts how scientist Jason Howard, a member of Erich Jarvis’s lab at Duke, first became…
[caption id="attachment_11577" align="alignright" width="300"] Photo courtesy of Andrew Digby, DOC New Zealand[/caption] New Zealand is more than an amazing vacation destination or the setting of the Lord of the Rings movies; it’s also home to a wealth of fascinating species that evolved in isolation for millions of years. The critically endangered kākāpō bird is one such species, and it needs your help now. David Iorns, a native New Zealander and founder of the Genetic Rescue Foundation, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money and pursue a grand vision: saving kākāpōs from extinction. With a high-quality genome already underway using…
We recently introduced our Genome Galaxy Initiative in partnership with Experiment, through which we’re helping scientists fund genomic research for the benefit of science and society. One of the first explorers of this initiative is Cory Gall, a graduate student at Washington State University who wants to curb the onset of a disease that may be linked to ticks in Africa. Gall brings our attention to the rising incidence of acute febrile illness occurring in the Mnisi community in South Africa, where close proximity of community animals (including dogs and cattle) and wild animals in a nearby national park may…