A dog's breakfast?

摘要

Once the human genome sequence was drafted and later finished, it became evident that the ultimate rationale for the International Human Genome Project was not deposition of a generic 3 billion--nucleotide list into GenBank. The real goals are muchbroader: first, to interpret the meaning of the human genome sequence by annotation, and second, to apply the derived knowledge for the betterment of humankind. Interpretation and annotation derive from comparative genomics in the same spirit that humansurgical procedures emerged from comparative anatomy; applications emerge from studies of the genetic influences affecting human susceptibility to disease. Comparative genomics for mammals, which advanced with the completion of draft genome sequences formouse and rat, is further expanded by Kirkness and colleagues (7) on page 1898 of this issue. Here, they present a 1.5X whole-genome sequence of the domestic dog. With the dog sequence, genomics ventures from the laboratory haven of traditional rodent models of disease into the living room with an annotated whole-genome sequence of man's best friend.