Kangaroo Genes Close To Humans; Came From China
AUSTRALIA: November 19, 2008
CANBERRA - Australia's kangaroos are genetically similar to humans and may
have first evolved in China, Australian researchers said on Tuesday.
Scientists said they had for the first time mapped the genetic code of the
Australian marsupials and found much of it was similar to the genome for
humans, the government-backed Centre of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics
said.
"There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of
that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order,"
centre Director Jenny Graves told reporters in Melbourne.
"We thought they'd be completely scrambled, but they're not. There is great
chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo
genome," Graves said, according to AAP.
Humans and kangaroos last shared an ancestor at least 150 million years ago,
the researchers found, while mice and humans diverged from one another only
70 million years ago.
Kangaroos first evolved in China, but migrated across the Americas to
Australia and Antarctica, they said.
"Kangaroos are hugely informative about what we were like 150 million years
ago," Graves said.
(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by David Fox)
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