Recent research on house finches has utilized a pangenomic approach, revealing significant structural genetic variations linked to disease resistance. The study, led by Bohao Fang, aggregates genomic data from numerous specimens, leading to insights previously obscured by traditional genomics. The findings include a notable DNA inversion that may boost the bird's ability to fight infections, providing a clearer understanding of how organisms evolve in response to environmental challenges, particularly without medical interventions like vaccines.
In the house finch, this new approach revealed a DNA inversion that has existed for millions of years - and that may have helped the bird fight off infection.
Traditionally people study the genetic variation in a single base pair [of DNA], while earlier studies had focused on specific genes in the hope of deciphering what Fang calls 'the heritable genetic mechanism underlying disease resistance.'
This gives us a better picture about how in the wild, without vaccines, evolution can respond to new diseases.
Combining the genomic information of many individual specimens, this approach looks at a large pool of genetic information and provides a 'higher resolution on the genetic information.'
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