Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

 Nov 19, 2020  

Last week the Bird 10,000 Genome Project (B10K) announced the release and analysis of genomes representing 92 percent of all bird families. B10K is an initiative to sequence the genomes of all living bird species. MVZ Professor and Curator of Amphibians and Reptiles Jim McGuire contributed significantly to the project. In the study, published in Nature, the B10K achieved its family phase milestone by releasing genomic resources for 363 bird species including 267 new bird genomes and illustrating how comparative analyses of these genomic resources help us understand the evolution of birds.