more doggy nonsense

Posted on September 27, 2003 by acb
The BBC did not just get its metaphors wrong about Craig Venter’s sequencing of his poodle’s genome. they failed to notice that he hasn’t actually done it. According to the AP report,
“The researchers achieved what is called 1.5 X coverage of the dog genome. This means many DNA fragments remain and the results are less accurate than the completed sequences of some other species. For instance, the mouse has been sequenced to 8 X coverage, which is considered ideal and essentially complete.”
It is really rather shaming that the BBC’s science coverage should be so bad.
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2 Responses to more doggy nonsense

  1. Oliver Morton says:
    September 29, 2003 at 11:19 am

    The Nature report on Nature Science Update does more or less the same thing, saying it’s a sequence and then poiting out lower down that it’s a very rough assembly of 2 million contigs (mot juste?) over 80% of the genome. The Science press release seems fairer, saying its a “rough sketch”.

    As far as i can tell there’s still a fair bit to learn about teh cost benefits curve when it comes to finidhing genomes. Sure, for some genomes — ours and those of lab animals like mice and zebra fish and, oh yes, worms, I suppose — you want up to 8X or above and thoroughly validated. But do we need that good a dog genome? or a whale genome?

    In nescience, o

  2. el Patron says:
    October 10, 2003 at 8:32 am

    We probably need a racehorse genome that good; at least, there’d be a demand for it.

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