On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… four calling birds. These are actually colly birds, otherwise known as blackbirds.
Christmas archive.
On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me… three French hens. In 2004, the Red Jungle Fowl (Gallus gallus), which is the progenitor of domestic chickens, was the first bird to have its genome sequenced.
On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me… two turtle doves – well, actually the genes for pigeon milk.
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me… a partridge in a pear tree. In 2009, researchers sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of the Sichuan Hill Partridge
Over the twelve days of Christmas, starting tomorrow on Christmas Day, and continuing through Twelfth Night to Epiphany, we will have the 12 genomes of Christmas – come back each day to see a new story.
As a Christmas gift to all our readers, Genome Engineering has adopted the word genome for a year.
Yawning is contagious, especially around the dinner table after a particularly large Christmas lunch. I’m even yawning just thinking about it. Yawns seem to be particularly easily passed around the family – so is it genetic?
The Genome Engineering blog launched in May 2010, and to celebrate the New Year, we bring you the top ten posts of 2010.
Let me invite you to join us for a special Genome Engineering Christmas lunch.
It’s tough job being a journal reviewer, and sometimes this creeps through in the reviewers’ notes. As you prepare your Christmas lunch, take a moment to digest these gems from Environmental Biology – I can almost guarantee they will be better than tomorrow’s Christmas cracker jokes!
