Gunnar Kaasen and with his dog Balto, the heroic dogsled team leader, sit for a portrait in the early 1920s. They sequenced and compared their genomes-the instructions organisms need to develop and grow. The Zoonomia team, led by Elinor Karlsson and Kerstin Lindblad-Toh at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, looked at 240 species of mammals, from bats to bison. 'It's the sort of thing that reminds me why it's cool to be a biologist.' 'It's just the wonder of biology, how we are so similar and dissimilar to all the things around us,' said O'Connor, who wasn't involved in the research. Researchers shared some of their discoveries in 11 papers published Thursday in the journal Science.ĭavid O'Connor, who studies primate genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the studies tackle deep questions. The findings come from the Zoonomia Project, an international effort that offers clues about human traits and diseases, animal abilities like hibernation and even the genetics behind a sled dog named Balto who helped save lives a century ago. One of the most striking revelations is that certain passages in the instructions for life have persisted across evolutionary time, representing a through line that binds all mammals-including us.
