Mapping Of Sea Lamprey Genome Offers Improved Understanding Of
Neurodegenerative Diseases In HumansMain Category: Neurology /
Neuroscience Also Included In: Genetics Article Date: 04 Mar
2013 Beginning in 2004, a group of scientists from around the
globe, including two University of Oklahoma faculty members, set
out to map the genome of the sea lamprey. The secrets of how
this jawless vertebrate separated from the jawed vertebrates
early in the evolutionary process will give insight to the
ancestry of vertebrate characters and may help investigators
more fully understand neurodegenerative diseases in humans.
David McCauley, associate professor in the Biology Department in
the OU College of Arts and Sciences, and Sandra W. Clifton, with
the OU Center for Advanced Genome Technology, collaborated with
scientists from Japan, Germany, the United States, Canada and
Great Britain. McCauley isolated and prepared the liver tissue
from the single adult female sea lamprey, from which genomic DNA
was isolated for sequenc