My homey Eric "Papa Doc" Karlins is a scientist, and he works at the National Human Genome Research Institute up in Bethesda. I believe his job involves doing science. Particularly science relating to genes. A project that he worked on for the better part of a year is currently "breaking science news." Apparently, this involved identifying some allele that is responsible for size in dogs. The domestic dog has a greater size range than any other "terrestial vertebrate." A full-grown chihuahua can weigh 2 pounds, while an adult Irish wolfhound might tip the scales at 160. You can check out the the abstract he worked on at the "Science" magazine site here:
If you'd prefer to get your information on this breaking science news minus all the fancy scientific terminology, check out this article in the New York Times:
And if you're too damn lazy to actually read something, and you prefer to receive your breaking science news in an audio format, you can check listen to the story on NPR's website:
GOOOOOOOO ERIC!!
1 comment:
Thanks for spreading the word D. Science is cool!
The significance of the finding is really that studying the dog genome in pure-bred dogs allows us to map genes for complex traits which could never be done in a very outbred, admixed species, like humans. Though the complex trait studied here is body size the techniques could certainly be used to study other complex traits like cancers and other diseases.
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