Sleeping dogs 英文参考文献.docVIP

Comment Sleeping dogs Gregory A Petsko Address: Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454-9110, USA. E-mail: petsko@ Published: 23 October 2003 Genome Biology 2003, 4:120 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2003/4/11/120 ? 2003 BioMed Central Ltd ‘Let sleeping dogs lie’ is a common English-language expres- sion. It means, of course, to let well enough alone; that it’s advisable not to disturb someone - or something - that might bite you if you do. Like many old aphorisms, there is much wisdom in it, and there have been a number of times when I wish I had followed it. without a physical or genetic map; happily, there was already a radiation hybrid map that could be used to anchor the sequences to their positions in the 40 dog chromosomes. Most of the coding sequences were fragmentary, but with the aid of the human and mouse genomes it was possible to determine that about 80% of human genes have identifiable homologs in the dog. As the database of complete, high- coverage mammalian genome sequences grows (the public genome project should have a 6.5X dog genome sequence in the future, and similar efforts for chimp and cow are far advanced), future low-coverage sequences will have even more reference genomes to aid in assembly, alignment and interpretation. While the present dog genome sequence makes it clear that high-coverage sequencing is essential for the important organisms, it also demonstrates that useful information for comparative genomics and organismal biology can be obtained relatively cheaply. Since there are about 5,000 different known species of mammal, we can also conclude that the sequencing programs are not likely to end any time soon! As I write this, two dogs are sleeping on the sofa next to me. I won’t wake them, not because they’d bite -