Studies comparing animal genomes generally focus on the DNA sequence itself. A new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis shows how the three-dimensional scaffolding of chromosomes is related across several species of carnivores, offering a new approach of "comparative scaffotyping" that could be used to identify related genes across species and place them in context. The work, published the week of Feb. 21 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also shows the power of large collections of genomes such as the Vertebrate Genomes Project and Earth BioGenome Project.
