# Platypus sequenced!



## mrhnau (May 8, 2008)

Apparently a group in Australia have sequenced the duckbilled platypus!


> The platypus sports fur like a mammal, paddles its duck feet like a bird and lays eggs in the manner of a reptile.
> 
> Nature's instruction manual for this oddball, it turns out, is just as much of a mishmash.


There are alot of species being worked on these days. Exciting times! I can't wait for the Water Bear to finish sequencing


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## crushing (May 8, 2008)

I heard about that on the radio yesterday (they also read the poem below, which I though was cute).  The NPR story also made it sound like the results of the sequencing is now challenging some of the ideas about when certain _features_, such as REM sleep, were introduced to animals.

Is it the survivability in the extremes that makes the water bear interesting to you?




> The Platypus by Ogden Nash
> 
> I like the duck-billed platypus
> Because it is anomalous.
> ...


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## mrhnau (May 8, 2008)

crushing said:


> Is it the survivability in the extremes that makes the water bear interesting to you?


Absolutely. I find the topic of extremophiles very interesting, as well as the field of exobiology. I've actually been looking for jobs in that area, but alas, no luck so far  From what I can tell, the water bear seems a very good candidate to study for the field of exobiology.


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## arnisador (May 8, 2008)

I read the platypus article. Neat!


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## MA-Caver (May 8, 2008)

To me, the platypus is God's way of showing he's got a sense of humor.


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## Big Don (May 8, 2008)

MA-Caver said:


> To me, the platypus is God's way of showing he's got a sense of humor.


To me, the platypus is like an animal version of stew, a little of this, a little of that...


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## MA-Caver (May 8, 2008)

Big Don said:


> To me, the platypus is like an animal version of stew, a little of this, a little of that...


heh, as long as it's the female... the males carry a poisonous spine on their hind foot.


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## Empty Hands (May 8, 2008)

...and yet the creationists will still insist there are no transitional animals.  Here's one!


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## Touch Of Death (May 8, 2008)

Empty Hands said:


> ...and yet the creationists will still insist there are no transitional animals. Here's one!


Which came first the platypuss or all the other animals?
Sean


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## FearlessFreep (May 8, 2008)

mrhnau said:


> Apparently a group in Australia have sequenced the duckbilled platypus!




Well, Yeah and they were pretty talented

When Pus Comes To Shove was pretty good but I was underwhelmed by Ice Cycles


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## crushing (May 8, 2008)

MA-Caver said:


> heh, as long as it's the female... the males carry a poisonous spine on their hind foot.


 






When the venomous spine doesn't work. . .  is there a pill for Reptile Dysfunction?


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## mrhnau (May 8, 2008)

Empty Hands said:


> ...and yet the creationists will still insist there are no transitional animals.  Here's one!


Would you please be so kind as to avoid jabs at creationist?


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## tellner (May 8, 2008)

Why avoid jabs at creationists?

They're hostile to logic, sneer at facts and have no understanding whatsoever of science as a concept. Push them far enough and they'll fall back to the position that any evidence that contradicts their prejudices is the result of the Devil arranging everything to fool anyone whose faith isn't as strong as theirs. Their only, I repeat only goal is to make everyone believe that their book of quotations from _*my*_ anonymous half-savage sheep-shagging barbarian ancestors is a perfect guide to science.

Their right to their beliefs must be reluctantly tolerated. The beliefs themselves and the tortured way they arrive at them deserve no respect whatsoever from thinking people.

In the case of the platypus we see not only a large number of physical traits normally found in reptiles, primitive birds and mammals. We also see genetic evidence that the species is intermediate between all three. It even extends to sex. In reptiles sex is determined developmentally. In birds XX is male and XY is female. In mammals XX is female and XY is male. In platypi there are ten chromosomes. In one configuration you get male. In another you get female. 

_[Correction: In birds it's ZW]_

The creationists can whinge and moan and twist all they want. This is just another example of how intellectually bankrupt their position is.

To answer ToD's question, birds are descended from dinosaurs. The platypus broke off around the time that birds and mammals began to split off from earlier lineages.


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## Empty Hands (May 8, 2008)

mrhnau said:


> Would you please be so kind as to avoid jabs at creationist?



No, I don't think so.  I get called a god-hating liar for believing that my scientific training is valid.  They can take a shot or two from little ol' me.


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## mrhnau (May 8, 2008)

Empty Hands said:


> No, I don't think so.  I get called a god-hating liar for believing that my scientific training is valid.  They can take a shot or two from little ol' me.


I understand, but it gets tiresome from this end too. Being called "intellectually bankrupt" based on someones beliefs gets old after the billionth time, especially when that individual has absolutely no clue who they are talking to.


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## tellner (May 8, 2008)

Empty Hands said:


> No, I don't think so.  I get called a god-hating liar for believing that my scientific training is valid.  They can take a shot or two from little ol' me.



Actually, they can't. Revealed religion - any revealed religion including my own - is incompatible with science at the most fundamental level. Science places evidence at the center and is willing, eager even, to abandon doctrine when it does not fit the facts. In a revealed religion the conlcusion is never in doubt by definition. Data must be explained in light of dogma and can not be permitted to interfere with the provided conclusion. 

Galileo's "It still moves" was the most dangerous statement possible to revealed religion. It represents a radical departure from authority as the source of answers about the world.  If the Revealed Truth develops the slightest crack the whole edifice falls and with it the philosophy that supports it. If a particular scientific theory is disproved it's another reason for grad students and junior faculty to get out of bed in the morning. Someone has to survey the new landscape and see what will fit best.


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## mrhnau (May 8, 2008)

Admin, can this be split? This has nothing to do w/ the Platypus being sequenced.


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## jim777 (May 8, 2008)

mrhnau said:


> Would you please be so kind as to avoid jabs at creationist?


 
"A very popular error - having the courage of one's convictions: Rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack upon one's convictions." - Friedrich Nietzsche


Back on topic, if ever an animal was created out of spare parts, it's the platypus  They've always been favorites of mine, along with okapis.


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## mrhnau (May 8, 2008)

The scientific process is a methodology. It is designed to answer questions about nature and that state of things. Certain things are excluded as they are non-testable. It requires the ability to test and prove/disprove. With regard to spiritual matters it has no place. It can only deal with observables.

This does not make science incompatible with religion. They answer different kinds of questions. Christianity (or any other religion) does not crumble when you realize the Earth is not the center of the universe, any more than my ability to jump up and down is effected by my ability to read a book.


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## Xue Sheng (May 8, 2008)

And all these years I have been trying to figure out how a Duck combined with a beaver and NOW you tell me it s part snake too!!!  

My brain cant take much more of this you know 

Very interesting article however, thanks for posting it


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## TheOriginalName (May 8, 2008)

Xue Sheng said:


> And all these years I have been trying to figure out how a Duck combined with a beaver and NOW you tell me it s part snake too!!!


 
Yes......like all things in this great southern land it's deadly!!

Platypus are awesome creatures though - if you ever happen to be in Melbourne make sure you head to Healesville Snctuary (http://www.zoo.org.au/HealesvilleSanctuary) which is famous for it's Platypus display. I beleive they are still the only place to ever have had success in breading them. 

But at the end of the day, no matter if you are a scientist or a creationist, sit back and admire the Platypus as it is truely unique!!


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## tellner (May 8, 2008)

mrhnau, it doesn't make science incompatible with religion. It makes science incompatible, and I was very careful to say this, with *revealed religion*.

Science is based on a radical sort of skepticism which holds conclusions to be tentative and open to question. 

Revealed religion is based on the assumption that the revelation is inarguable and fundamentally unquestionable.

A revealed religion *may be true to fact*. 

But it is fundamentally incompatible with scientific inquiry.

That is why creationism is not and can not be science. It *may or may not be true* that The One Whose Name is Neither Spoken nor Written made the world in seven literal days and all the creatures in it within well defined boundaries. It is the _basis_ of the belief that distinguishes them. The scientific approach is to examine the evidence, draw conclusions and see if how well the conclusions fit with or predict other observations. The creationist approach, once you strip away the verbiage, is that the revealed text is true and that observations may only serve to confirm it. If they do not confirm the foregone conclusion they must be reinterpreted until they do.

On one side you have "What do you know? How do you know it?"

On the other you have "G-d said it. We believe it. That settles it."

It couldn't be any clearer.


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## tellner (May 8, 2008)

As far as the platypus goes, I have to go with Terry Pratchett. In _Last Continent_ he holds that it was a duck designed by a committee of people who had never actually seen an uncooked duck.

When you think about it, ecologically that's not far off.

The sequencing of its genome is a fantastic thing. Whole forests, not to mention moles of innocent electrons, can and should be sacrificed to describing it and seeing how it fits in with the genomes of the three-plus different classes that it borrows from.


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## Twin Fist (May 8, 2008)

mrhnau said:


> I understand, but it gets tiresome from this end too. Being called "intellectually bankrupt" based on someones beliefs gets old after the billionth time, especially when that individual has absolutely no clue who they are talking to.



Not to mention it is RUDE and totally OFF TOPIC


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## Xue Sheng (May 8, 2008)

TheOriginalName said:


> Yes......like all things in this great southern land it's deadly!!
> 
> Platypus are awesome creatures though - if you ever happen to be in Melbourne make sure you head to Healesville Snctuary (http://www.zoo.org.au/HealesvilleSanctuary) which is famous for it's Platypus display. I beleive they are still the only place to ever have had success in breading them.
> 
> But at the end of the day, no matter if you are a scientist or a creationist, sit back and admire the Platypus as it is truely unique!!


 
Thank You, if I am ever in Melbourne I just might do that.

I have always wanted to see a live Platypus but all I have ever seen is on TV.


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## Xue Sheng (May 8, 2008)

You know, reading through this thread I have to say I cannot quite figure out how a simple Platypus can cause such a fuss and I doubt that the Platypus much cares about religion or the lack of it


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## Sukerkin (May 8, 2008)

From whence comes such a fuss?  Quite easy really, *Xue*.  

Because I like a quiet life, I don't take Sky-God Worshippers to task for what I see as an abrogation of reason - particularly as I grew up as manic a brain-washed religionist as any cultist could wish for.

When refusal to face facts under the umbrella of 'spirituality' is laid bare, however, there comes a point when enough is enough and tho' *Tellner* may make his points more pithily than I would like that does not rob them of their fundamental validity.  

It does not make them O(n)T(opic) either but that's for others than me to decide on.  If the thread splits that's good in my book as it seperates out the 'conversational' from the 'disputive'.

The platypus is one of four things:

a) Proof that the mythical Invisible-Sky-God has a sense of humour
b) Proof that there is no such thing as a God (see 'mythical' and 'invisible')
c) Proof that Old Mythical is cunning and plants a dead-give-away of non-existence to test the faithful
d) Cute in it's own inimitable way

I'll take (b) and (d) but other peoples choices may differ, which they are welcome to do.


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## Xue Sheng (May 8, 2008)

Sukerkin said:


> The platypus is one of four things:
> 
> a) Proof that the mythical Invisible-Sky-God has a sense of humour
> b) Proof that there is no such thing as a God (see 'mythical' and 'invisible')
> ...


 
Or proof that some how a beaver a duck and a snake got busy 

I understand what you are saying but I guess it is to me simply a platypus, pretty cool in my opinion, but still just a platypus and not really proof of much other that nature is pretty amazing sometimes.

:asian:


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## Steel Tiger (May 8, 2008)

Always interesting to see this kind of thing.  166 million years since we had a common ancestor, that's pretty cool.  That's firmly in the Jurassic which is interesting from the point of view of mammal evolution.  For so  long no one has really looked at the earliest development of mammals, writing them off as a collection of small homologous creatures.  But studies like this open up our perception of the diversity of the earliest mammal life.


You know, the only thing we don't have a venomous version of is a lizard, have to go to America for that one.


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## Makalakumu (May 8, 2008)

Mammalian evolution is so interesting.  Mammals first evolved in the Permian and when the Great Dying came about, they were one of the survivors out of the ten that died.  When dinosaurs came on the scene, they out competed the mammals and won out.

Things didn't change much until the Jurrasic when Pangaea started to break up.  

Mammals were not much different from reptiles at this time.  Most early mammals, according the fossil evidence, which isn't much admittedly, laid eggs, had specialized teeth, and lived in burrows.  

When Laurasia and Gondwana broke up from each other a split occured in mammals.  The marsupials and monotremes remained mostly in the south while the placentals developed in the north.  

The platypus is a throwback to an ancient time.  It is the coelocanth of the mammalian world.  For instance, the platypus nurses and doesn't have nipples.  The platypus secrets milk from a diffuse network of glands on its belly that its young lick as it drains in rivulets.  

This is very instructive because it gives biologists a clue as to why the nipple developed.


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## jks9199 (May 8, 2008)

Xue Sheng said:


> And all these years I have been trying to figure out how a Duck combined with a beaver and NOW you tell me it s part snake too!!!
> 
> My brain cant take much more of this you know
> 
> Very interesting article however, thanks for posting it


It does conjure quite an image, doesn't...  Carnal acts over nests with confused snakes wandering by...:xtrmshock:erg::uhoh:


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