Thursday 5 December 2013

Genome for the King Cobra Sequenced

Dec. 3, 2013 — Researchers from LSTM, along with a team of international biologists who have recently sequenced the genome of the king cobra, say that their work reveals dynamic evolution and adaptation in the snake venom system, which seemingly occurs in response to an evolutionary arms race between venomous snakes and their prey.
A paper co-lead by Dr Nicholas Casewell, a NERC research Fellow at LSTM, and 34 co-authors from six countries, including the Director of the Alistair Reid Venom Unit at LSTM, Dr Robert Harrison, has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Members of this team also analysed the genome of the Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus) and used it for comparison with the king cobra (Ophiophagus Hannah). These papers represent the first complete and annotated snake genomes.

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