Ricki Lewis

As a textbook author, I often have to evaluate new research and predict whether it will stand the test of time. I’m a skeptic. But when Svante Pääbo, director of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and his colleagues introduced a new member of the human family in 2010 based on a preliminary genome sequence from a finger bone found in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia, with few other clues, I included her in my book. She was the first discovered Denisovan (pronounced “Denise-o-van”).  Read More 

When I wrote for The Scientist, I covered the debuts of several genome sequences – fruit fly, rat, pufferfish, and the plague bacterium, to name a few. An illustration in my human genetics textbook resembles the intro to The Brady Bunch, a checkerboard of nine new genomes with each edition, now with more than 1,000 to choose from. In just the past few weeks, several salad ingredients have had their genomes unveiled.

But the genome sequence to intrigue me the most, except for our own, is that of the bonobo, aka Pan paniscus.  Read More