- 건국대학교

	The First Joint Research on the Complete Analysis of Whale Genome
	관리자		1222		2014.03.25

An international research team comprising researchers from 24 institutions and seven countries - Korea, China, US, Great Britain, Denmark, Russia, and Saudi Arabia - has succeeded in decoding the DNA of minke whales. An important contribution was attributed to Prof. Chankyu Park, Dept. of Animal Biotechnology, Konkuk University (KU).
Utilizing Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology, the research team investigated the DNA sequence collected from the muscles of minke whales captured in the East Sea. For genetic diversity, the dielectric substances of fin whale, bottle-nosed dolphin, and porpoise were also analyzed.
Prof. Park, through his studies, identified 20,605 whale genes and found that the genes necessary for the marine environment with low oxygen and high salinity were advanced, and that sensory organs which are not crucial for survival in the ocean gradually degraded. In particular, he found that whales, due to the peculiarity of the marine environment, have adapted to the environment with severe degeneration and restriction on the genetic information for olfaction compared to that of cows and pigs, which have a close phylogenetic relationship with them. The study results were published in Nature Genetics online (Nov. 25, 2013), a sister journal of Nature. Prof. Park has also participated in the International Swine Genome Sequencing Consortium, which was published in the Dec. 2013 volume of Nature.
This study is the first report of a whole-genome analysis carried out in whales despite similar research being conducted by research groups in other countries such as the US and China. Prof. Park's research was reported prior to that of the other research groups.
Researchers project that an understanding of the idiosyncratic physiological phenomena of whales will be conducive to the study of human illnesses such as hypoxia and cardiovascular disorders. This research is also suggested to have a positive impact on the preservation of endangered whale species.
 
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Posted by Eun Jin Cho

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