HENRY

There’s a new Trends in Genetics issue out, and as always, it’s packed with goodies. First up, we have Mills et al who review recent work on transposable elements and their effect on the human genome:

Although a large proportion (44%) of the human genome is occupied by transposons and transposon-like repetitive elements, only a small proportion (<0.05%) of these elements remain active today. Recent evidence indicates that not, vert, similar 35–40 subfamilies of Alu, L1 and SVA elements (and possibly HERV-K elements) remain actively mobile in the human genome. These active transposons are of great interest because they continue to produce genetic diversity in human populations and also cause human diseases by integrating into genes. In this review, we examine these active human transposons and explore mechanistic factors that influence their mobilization.

Next, there’s an interesting paper by Horvarth and Willard on the genetics of Lemurs:

Lemurs hold a key position at the base of the primate evolutionary tree and will be highly informative for the genomics community by offering comparisons of primate-specific characteristics and processes. Combining research in chromosome evolution, genome evolution and behavior with lemur comparative genomic sequencing will offer insights into many levels of primate evolution. We discuss the current state of lemur cytogenetic and phylogenetic analyses, and suggest how focusing more genomic efforts on lemurs will be beneficial to understanding human and primate evolution, as well as disease, and will contribute to conservation efforts.

Finally, Hajibabaei et al, talk about how DNA barcoding complements taxonomy, molecular phylogenetics and population genetics:

DNA barcoding aims to provide an efficient method for species-level identifications and, as such, will contribute powerfully to taxonomic and biodiversity research. As the number of DNA barcode sequences accumulates, however, these data will also provide a unique ‘horizontal’ genomics perspective with broad implications. For example, here we compare the goals and methods of DNA barcoding with those of molecular phylogenetics and population genetics, and suggest that DNA barcoding can complement current research in these areas by providing background information that will be helpful in the selection of taxa for further analyses.

Posted on April 1st, 2007 by Simon Greenhill