The Platypus and Human Shared Genes

The strange little platypus has a bill and webbed feet like a duck, lays eggs like a bird or a reptile, but also produces milk and has fur like a mammal. This odd little creature may be more important than we knew. This species is so strange that when the first one was sent to Europe in the 19th century, scientists suspected a hoax.

The platypus has a bill and webbed feet like a duck, lays eggs like a bird or a reptile but also produces milk and has fur like a mammal. What could the genetics of the duck billed platypus possibly be? The platypus is native to Australia and is so peculiar it reflects significant branching and transitions in evolution.

An international team of scientists have announced the first decoding of the platypus genome. The findings provided,”many clues to the function and evolution of all mammalian genomes,” including that of humans, and should “inspire advances in other investigations of mammalian biology and evolution.” the research is described in the journal Nature

The scientists, led by Wesley C. Warren a geneticist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, included almost 100 scientists from 8 countries. They found the platypus gnome contains 18,500 genes, similar to other vertebrates and about 2/3 the size of a human genome. The platypus shared 82% of it’s genes with human, mouse, dog, opossum and chicken gnomes.

What makes this so interesting is that it sounds to me as if the strange little platypus carries all our genes in his own gene pool. If worse comes to worse and the platypus survives maybe in thousands of years humans and animals will inhabit the earth again. Our world and everything in it is so intricate once you really look at it, there must be a strategy for every eventuality.

The platypus may be the key to life in the future. I think nature and life as we know it will be so simple once scientists get to the bottom of our existence. Future generations will look back and think we were a people with very low intelligence. And they will be right.