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From the Archives: We've delved into the ӳ����ýMinded blog archives to bring you this post, which was originally published in November 2010.

At the risk of catching a bad case of right before the holidays, I googled “turkey genome” this week to see what’s cooking in the world of poultry genomics. It turns out that scientists have already mapped about 90 percent of the turkey’s genome and are learning about genes that influence things like meat quality, disease susceptibility, and turkey reproduction and fertility. You can read more about the turkey genome project .

Though it may not seem obvious, fungi are the sister group to animals on the tree of life. Unlike bacteria, which are an entirely different part of the tree of life, fungi are nestled in with eukaryotes close to humans and other animals. Because of that they share a lot of common biological pathways. To treat a fungal infection successfully, without eliciting undue harm to its human host, one needs to find out what makes them different from animals.

If you stand in the lobby of the ӳ����ý, it’s hard not to notice the movement of mammals above your head. A 17-foot wide mobile that hangs from the lobby’s ceiling includes the silhouettes of a chimpanzee, two-toed sloth, alpaca, little brown bat, elephant, dolphin, and more. Each of the depicted mammals gently swaying from the mobile’s branches has had its genome sequenced at the ӳ����ý, the Genome Institute at Washington University, or the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center.

By now most of us have grown accustomed to – if not entirely comfortable with – the knowledge that we share our bodies with countless microbes. Good and bad, our skin, our mouths, and our guts teem with them. Scientists are now training next-generation sequencing technologies on these bugs, turning up surprises that may shed light on human disease, including cancer.