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The platypus sport fur like a mammalian , paddles its duck’s egg feet like a bird and set ballock in the mode of a reptilian .
Nature ’s instruction manual of arms for this oddball , it wrench out , is just as much of a mishmash .
The platypus sports a patchwork of features from mammals, reptiles and birds.
Researchers just map the genome of a distaff platypus from Australia . The genetic sequence of this Aussie monotreme ( a character of mammal ) is detailed in the May 8 event of the journalNature .
" The platypus is a very ancient offshoot of the mammal tree , so it was 166 million geezerhood ago that we last shared a unwashed root with platypuses , " said study team extremity Jenny Graves , fountainhead of the Comparative Genomics Group at the Australian National University . " And that place them somewhere between mammals and reptiles , because they still preserve quite a bunch of reptilian characteristic that we ’ve lose , for illustration they still lay bollock . "
She tally , " So we can use them to decipher the changes that have occur as we went from being a reptile , to have fur to making milk to having live - born unseasoned . "
The primitive mammal lives in tunnel in Eastern Australia dug along the Sir Joseph Banks of streams and rivers that it relies on for food . Its flat , streamlined soundbox extends just 20 inches ( 50 centimeters ) , fee with a tail that resembles a Ping River - niff boat paddle and four webbed feet . The platypus ( Ornithorhynchus anatinus ) is one of only two mammals — the other is theechidna(spiny anteater ) — thatlays egg . And unlike other mammals , the manlike platypus can deliver venom from a tiny spur track on each hind tree branch .
To sort out the evolutionary relationships among platypuses and other animals , the team compared the genome of a distaff duckbill dub Glennie with those of human race , mice , hound , opossum and poulet . ( Chickens were included to represent egg - laying animals , such as out reptile , that slip by on much of their DNA to the platypus and other mammals in the course of evolution . )
At roughly 2.2 billion base pairs , the Ornithorhynchus anatinus genome is about two - third the size of it of the human genome , the researchers find . It shares more than 80 percent of itsgeneswith other mammals .
Like humans , duckbilled platypus conduct an X and a Y chromosome . But unlike humanity , the X and Y are not sex chromosomes . " That means we can go right back to the meter when our sex chromosomes were just ordinary chromosomes bear in mind their own business and ask well what go on , what made them into sex chromosomes , " Graves said .
The researchers let on the animate being has 52 chromosome , let in 10 sex chromosome .
The genome also included section of DNA link up to testis - laying and others for suckling . Since the duck-billed platypus lacks nipples , the puppy suckle milk from the mother ’s abdominal pelt .
Another crotchet : When paddling through the water , a platypus keeps its eyes , ears and nostril closed , and its duck - note serves as an antenna , smell out the faint electric fields border prey . Even so , the platypus genome reveals the fauna held onto gene for odor - detection .
The study , which included more than 100 scientists from across the globe , was funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute ( NHGRI ) .
