The gibbon genome, a new tool for understanding cancer – The País.com (Spain)

Photography provided by the CSIC of a female white-cheeked gibbon. / Lucia Carbone (AP)

The gibbon, small ape that inhabits the tropical forests of Southeast Asia, has become the ultimate tool that will help scientists better understand the mechanisms of diseases like cancer. An international team of scientists has sequenced the entire genome of this ape, the last of which was left to decipher genetic material. The result of the research, which will help to better understand how DNA changes during the evolutionary process, is published today in the journal Nature

The work, led by the Oregon Health & Dev. Science University, has had Spanish participation, namely the Institute of Evolutionary Biology –Centre mixed CSIC / UPF– and the National Center for Genome Analysis (CNAG) in Barcelona, ​​where it has become part of the sequencing and analysis genetic gibbons used in research. A job as assured COUNTRY Tomas Marques-Bonet, a researcher at these two centers will allow better understanding of what makes us human.

“For 15 years scientists have been sequencing the genome of living individuals evolutionarily closer to humans. started with the chimpanzee and gradually we have been coming to the farthest. The latter is the gibbon, and with it closed a chapter in the process of understanding the human genome and start looking in detail regions that are specifically human, “explained Marques-Bonet. “These could obviously be related to diseases that have only human. Now await us years and years of work to understand genomes. Latter tool adds to that provided other great apes to understand these regions only belong to our species, and then relate them to our peculiarities, including our diseases. ” adds.

The gibbon genome is the most chromosomal rearrangements have all apes. In other species, like humans, these structural changes in DNA are consequences of serious diseases such as cancer. But not so with the gibbons: they have overcome this obstacle. “Now we have to try to find mechanisms to explain the effect of these reorganizations, see if they have to do with the tumor cells, with how tumors are created,” says the researcher. “Gibbons can be a good model to study.’ve Explained how, but why now missing. Did these animals are resistant to these chromosomal changes, unlike humans,” he added.

The gibbon DNA sequencing has brought to light a hitherto unknown element among hominids, a DNA sequence called LAVA and these animals have more than a thousand copies throughout their genome. This is a novelty in the evolutionary process, researchers will have to continue studying. “Technically, in recent years we have made enormous progress.. Now know read many genomes The big question, the challenge of this century biology is to understand these genomes One of the most powerful tools is the comparative genomics , evolutionary or not, “says Marques-Bonet.