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Superhero Kitteh Cinnamon |
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COLUMBIA,
Mo 8/30/14 (Beat Byte) -- A
Columbia kitty has made medical history.
With genetic material from Cinnamon, a female Abyssinian cat who lives and
works at Mizzou's College of Veterinary Medicine, 26 genetics researchers from
the U.S., Russia, Turkey, Portugal, and Spain this month announced they have finally
sequenced the entire cat genome, coiled strands of DNA and RNA
that determine the characteristics of life.
In
the works for nearly a decade, the Feline Genome Project promises help
with human diseases including AIDS, leukemia, muscular dystrophy, polycystic
kidney disease, and some forms of blindness. Cinnamon was
specifically bred to develop retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease
that famously afflicts Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn.
Domestic cats share "nearly 250 genetic diseases analogous to human
disorders," the cat genome team -- which includes Mizzou veterinary
ophthalmology professor Kristina Narfstrom, DVM, PhD --
explains in their August paper for the journal Gigascience.
"Feline infectious agents offer powerful natural models of deadly human
diseases, which include feline immunodeficiency virus, feline sarcoma virus and
feline leukemia virus."
An oft-repeated analogy likens the genome
to a book. Chromosomes are chapters; genes are words; DNA and RNA are
individual letters. Sequencing the genome is analogous to finding
the type and location of every letter in the book. Since each cell in the
body contains at least one copy of the book -- the genome -- knowing how many
times the letter "A" recurs, and where, is powerful information.
Understanding the cat genome will better help geneticists correlate DNA damage
to disease. A deletion of DNA at one point in the genome might cause
blindness, for instance, just like deleting the letter A from every word in a
book would create gibberish. Adding or substituting DNA anywhere
along the genome can have similar harmful effects, the same way adding or
changing letters in a book could destroy its meaning and contents.
First reported in 2007 when it was partially sequenced,
Cinnamon's genome includes 21,865 genes that code for proteins that determine
everything from hair color to personality. Though she has been in the spotlight since
that first report, Cinnamon has two lower-profile male partners -- Boris, from
St. Petersburg, Russia; and Silvester, a European wildcat whose DNA the
scientists compared to the two domestic cats.