Decode the fragile genome

The identification of more than 800 genes involved in the practice of singing of manholes can shed light on human language disorders.

Young manholes learn to sing almost like the way children learn to speak, by imitating adults. This means that this small bird can be considered a valuable model for understanding learning and remembering in humans.

The Australian manhunt weighs less than 14 grams, the second bird with the decoded genome (after chicken in 2004). The young male imitates his father's song and passes it on to the next generation. From such learning of manholes, and many of their genes are also found in humans, this bird may be helpful in understanding the origin of language disorders, such as autism and stroke. stroke, stuttering and Parkinson's disease. Experts identify the genome of the manhole "with particular relevance to human neurology".

However, the separation of a complex sequence of genetic and molecular factors related to learning is not easy. In particular, many genes activated by birdsong do not act as normal genes encoded to produce proteins. Instead, they belong to a part of the unencrypted genome, or once called a junk DNA. Analysis of the manhole genome provides additional data to prove that these DNA fragments are not "junk", but actually have important biological functions.