DESIGNING PROBOSCIDEA:

A mammoth task: New technology sequences part of the genome of an extinct behemoth, and promises to help unravel other ancient DNA (Byron Spice, December 26, 2005, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

A week ago, an international team including Dr. Schuster and Penn State colleague Webb Miller, announced they had recovered DNA from a woolly mammoth that had been preserved in the permafrost of northern Siberia for 27,000 years and used a new gene sequencing technology to unravel a portion of its genetic code.

"I'm convinced we'll be able to sequence the entire genome," said Hendrik N. Poinar, a molecular evolutionary geneticist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and lead author of last week's report in the journal Science.

That will enable researchers to compare and contrast the extinct behemoth's genome, which is almost as large as a human's, with that of the African elephant. And that will allow scientists to get a better idea of what evolutionary changes occurred that caused woolly mammoths and African elephants to diverge 5 million to 6 million years ago, Dr. Poinar said, as well as to better understand why the elephant survived while the mammoth went extinct.

Of course, we know how they became extinct: we hunted them to extinction. And elephants are an excellent example of how little divergence matters, as we can crossbreed Asian and African elephants and will undoubtedly be able to crossbreed them with mammoths as well.

MORE:
Global Polio Largely Fading: Stronger Vaccine Is Playing Key Role (David Brown, December 26, 2005, Washington Post)

The 17-year effort to eradicate polio from the world appears to be back on track after nearly unraveling in the past three years.

A new strategy of using a vaccine targeting the dominant strain of the virus appears to have eliminated polio from Egypt, one of six countries where it was freely circulating. That approach is on the verge of doing the same in India. Twenty-five years ago, India had 200,000 cases of paralytic polio a year. A decade ago, it was still seeing 75,000 cases annually. Through November this year, it recorded 52.

Such dramatic successes, many the result of a more potent formulation of polio vaccine, have once again made eradication of the paralyzing viral disease a realistic goal. Only one human disease -- smallpox -- has ever been wiped out, and that was almost three decades ago.

Intensive immunization campaigns targeting tens of millions of children in Africa have suppressed polio transmission in countries where it reappeared after the continent's most populous nation, Nigeria, halted universal polio vaccination in 2003. [...]

Since the vaccine went into use in Egypt this spring, polio has disappeared there. UNICEF has ordered 600 million doses and plans to use it throughout much of Africa.

Next year, India may be free of polio. One former hotbed -- Bombay -- already is.

Since April, no polio virus has been detected in that city's sewage. That is indirect evidence the virus is no longer carried by any of its 12.7 million residents -- undoubtedly for the first time in history.

Once again, intelligent design.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 26, 2005 8:40 AM