Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Design and conventions of this book
- 1 Introduction: working with the molecules of life in the computer
- 2 Gene technology: cutting DNA
- 3 Gene technology: knocking genes down
- 4 Gene technology: amplifying DNA
- 5 Human disease: when DNA sequences are toxic
- 6 Human disease: iron imbalance and the iron responsive element
- 7 Human disease: cancer as a result of aberrant proteins
- 8 Evolution: what makes us human?
- 9 Evolution: resolving a criminal case
- 10 Evolution: the sad case of the Tasmanian tiger
- 11 A function to every gene: termites, metagenomics and learning about the function of a sequence
- 12 A function to every gene: royal blood and order in the sequence universe
- 13 A function to every gene: a slimy molecule
- 14 Information resources: learning about flu viruses
- 15 Finding genes: going ashore at CpG islands
- 16 Finding genes: in the world of snurpsp
- 17 Finding genes: hunting for the distant RNA relatives
- 18 Personal genomes: the differences between you and me
- 19 Personal genomes: what’s in my genome?
- 20 Personal genomes: details of family genetics
- Appendix I Brief Unix reference
- Appendix II A selection of biological sequence analysis software
- Appendix III A short Perl reference
- Appendix IV A brief introduction to R
- Index
- References
10 - Evolution: the sad case of the Tasmanian tiger
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Design and conventions of this book
- 1 Introduction: working with the molecules of life in the computer
- 2 Gene technology: cutting DNA
- 3 Gene technology: knocking genes down
- 4 Gene technology: amplifying DNA
- 5 Human disease: when DNA sequences are toxic
- 6 Human disease: iron imbalance and the iron responsive element
- 7 Human disease: cancer as a result of aberrant proteins
- 8 Evolution: what makes us human?
- 9 Evolution: resolving a criminal case
- 10 Evolution: the sad case of the Tasmanian tiger
- 11 A function to every gene: termites, metagenomics and learning about the function of a sequence
- 12 A function to every gene: royal blood and order in the sequence universe
- 13 A function to every gene: a slimy molecule
- 14 Information resources: learning about flu viruses
- 15 Finding genes: going ashore at CpG islands
- 16 Finding genes: in the world of snurpsp
- 17 Finding genes: hunting for the distant RNA relatives
- 18 Personal genomes: the differences between you and me
- 19 Personal genomes: what’s in my genome?
- 20 Personal genomes: details of family genetics
- Appendix I Brief Unix reference
- Appendix II A selection of biological sequence analysis software
- Appendix III A short Perl reference
- Appendix IV A brief introduction to R
- Index
- References
Summary
From 1878 to 1896, 3482 Tiger skins were despatched from [a tannery] to London where they were made into waistcoats.
(Norman Laird, article in The Mercury, 7 October 1968; cited in (Owen, 2003)This chapter will deal further with phylogenetic analysis. We will introduce methods in addition to those of neighbour-joining and we will use a Perl script to examine taxonomy data. For these topics we will take a closer look at an extinct animal, the Tasmanian tiger.
Extinction
The Tasmanian tiger was not, in fact, a tiger; it was a dog-like marsupial animal. Thylacine is the more adequate scientific name. In the early twentieth century it existed only in Tasmania, and even there it was very scarce. A farmer named Wilf Batty lived in the Mawbanna district of northeastern Tasmania. On 13 May 1930 he spotted a thylacine attempting to break into his chicken coop. Batty had observed the thylacine around his house for weeks, and this day he took his rifle and shot the animal. As it happened, this was the last wild thylacine to be killed. Another specimen, most likely a female, was captured in 1933 and kept at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. She died on 7 September 1936, apparently as a result of neglect. The animal was kept outdoors and was not allowed access to her den, despite difficult temperatures. Ironically, the death took place only two months after the thylacine species was given full legal protection by the Tasmanian government. There are sightings of the thylacine reported after 1936, but none of these are well documented and we unfortunately need to regard the thylacine as being extinct.
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- Genomics and BioinformaticsAn Introduction to Programming Tools for Life Scientists, pp. 121 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012