Humans like to think we have a monopoly on understanding ourselves ¡ª that explanations for all our inner workings, including when things go awry, lie within our genetic code.
We might like to think that, but we¡¯re wrong. Whether it¡¯s the diminutive bumblebee bat, the lightning-fast cheetah or even a lumbering hippo, mammals hold important clues to what makes us tick.
That¡¯s the message of a massive data release from a project called Zoonomia, in which some 100 scientists at dozens of institutions spent over a decade collecting, sequencing and analyzing the genomes of 239 mammals (and one human thrown in for comparison). The ambitious work makes clear that animals have a lot to teach us about the more mysterious parts of our own genomes.
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