For example, even though there is currently DNA sequence data from only eight species in the FOXP2 region of the genome in the Santa Cruz database, more extensive comparisons of that region undertaken during independent studies by Svante Paabo and his colleagues clearly show that changes in FOXP2 may have contributed to the evolution of fluent speech in the human lineage, Haussler said. "The nucleotide is C for more than 300 million years, and then suddenly it's A, just in the human lineage," he said. "You can see it. That's the excitement of documenting these dramatic events that can change the nature of an organism over evolutionary time."

But since the Santa Cruz database includes extensive information about eight species for all genes, genome-wide, not just for special, well-studied regions of the genome, like FOXP2 or CFTR, Haussler said that it should be an exciting tool for researchers. "Now all researchers worldwide can do evolutionary analysis on the genes they are most interested in," he said.

The tool is already proving valuable to Haussler's group, which has done comparisons of modern species with their common ancestor, and turned up differences in the rates of genetic change among lineages. For instance, about 22 percent of the human genome consists of new DNA insertions since the time of the common ancestor, and of the remaining DNA about 9 percent of the bases have undergone changes. In rodents, about 55 to 60 percent of nucleotides are new since the common ancestor -- a heightened rate of DNA change that results partly from the shorter generation time of rodents but appears to be due to other factors as well. Haussler said that the recent development of new mathematical approaches, such as those created by HHMI investigator Philip Green at the University of Washington, shou
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Contact: Jim Keeley
keeleyj@hhmi.org
301-215-8858
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
30-Nov-2004

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