Author: rayna.s
-
“Do what it takes to solve the problem, and no more”: a small talk with ‘Bunnie’ Huang
As a Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) geek, I was really looking very much forward to anything coming out from the linux.conf.au, better known as LCA. And for a huge bouquet of surprises, this year’s edition was one. Along with Radia Perlman and Bdale Garbee, there was Andrew ‘bunnie’ Huang. He is a very…
-
Bacon Fans United: The Pig Genome Sequenced
Breeding healthier and meatier piggies has been one of the many scientific challenges of the past decades; creating more reliable models to study human diseases is another. The swine disease model is indeed much better to use when studying human disorders than the (thus far) widely used murine models. Although pigs reproduce slower than mice…
-
How Have Marsupials Evolved?
The phylogenetic relationships between two orders of marsupials have been intesively debated. Authors benefited from recent sequencing projects which provided two marsupial genomes: this of the South American opossum (Monodelphis domestica) and the one of a kangaroo, the Australian tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Retroposons are suitable and homoplasy-free markers: their insertion sites are random; parallel…