Genome of sled dog Balto hides an evolutionary surprise

Remember Barto’s story? In 1925, the town of Nome, Alaska was facing a diphtheria epidemic. Balto was a sled dog and a very good boy who helped bring life-saving medicine to the townspeople. Balto’s twisty story has been told many times, including in a 1990s animated film in which Kevin Bacon gave the iconic dog voice.

But last month, scientists revealed another side of the Baltic. They sequenced his genes and found that the sled dog was not what they expected.Research published in journals chemistry, The project is part of a project called Zoonomia, which aims to better understand the evolution of mammals, including our own genomes, by examining the genes of other animals, from narwhals to aardvarks. bottom.

Guest host Flora Lichtman with Dr. Eleanor Carlson, associate professor of bioinformatics and integrative biology at the Massachusetts Chan College of Medicine and director of vertebrate genomics at the Broad Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University I will have a conversation. Dr. Katie Moon, postdoctoral researcher who led Balto’s research. Dr. Beth Shapiro, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is a co-author of a new study on the Baltic and another paper identifying the animals most likely to become extinct.

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