Dog genome sequenced

Canines can take their place among the 180-some members-including microbes, bacteria, and the honeybee-of the pantheon of organisms whose genomes have been sequenced. In this week’s Nature, researchers report the genetic sequencing of a boxer breed of dog. Scientists say the sequencing of the dog genome will be a boon to better understanding human disease. Cancers, heart disease, epilepsy, and deafness are diseases prevalent in dogs and humans-and both live under similar environmental conditions. The dog in question, a boxer named Tasha, was not the first canine to have at least a part of its genome sequenced, though. That honour falls to Shadow, a pooch belonging to Dr. Craig Venter, the brains behind the private effort at the Human Genome Project.

-Mike Ghenu

Source: Nature, New Scientist

Fusion power update

India has agreed to chip in on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), joining China, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the US. Though nuclear fusion has been fourty years away from reality for the last sixty years, ITER is meant to lead to a prototype fusion reactor. It is slated to go operational in 2015, and last for 35 years, at a cost of US$10 billion. Earlier this year, the six project participants finally agreed, after years of wrangling, to site the project in France.

-M.G.

Source: BBC News

Eat (bat) crap

Cave dwelling salamanders in the US mid-west have switched their diet from fungus to bat crap, according to scientists at the University of Oklahoma. The salamander, Eurycea spelaeus lives in the caves of the US mid-west along with bats who are famous for their nutritious feces. “If you could somehow sterilise bat guano, it would probably make a good human food item,” said lead researcher Dante Fenolio, who first suspected the diet change when captured salamanders repeatedly spit up bat guano on his hands and clothes.

-Chris Damdar

Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B

Winter wonderland

With the school term at an end, and The Varsity’s presses shuttered until Jan. 10, 2006, some of you will no doubt be jonesing for a science fix during the break. You can trust www.inkycircus.com to fill this void, an intelligent science blog penned by three London-based science writers. Two of them, Anna Gosline and Anne Casselman, are U of T graduates, and, together with a third scribbler, they are striving to start a science magazine for women. Check ’em out.