Contact: SciPak They don't fly, they aren't lemurs, but colugos are our closest relative
Researchers have determined that colugos are the closest relative to primates, according to a Science research article. Humans belong to the biological order of primates along with apes, monkeys and lemurs. Knowing who we are related to allows researchers the opportunity to study how we primates evolved from our nearest relative.
Colugos are mammals that live in Southeast Asia. They are also known as flying lemurs, but they don't fly and they aren't lemurs. They look like large squirrels with bat-like "wings" that allow them to glide, not fly, from tree to tree. Jan E. Janečka and an international team used two independent approaches in their sleuthing. They first compared major DNA – an organism's set of blueprints of life -- sequence changes called indels in the genome sequence of primates, colugos and tree shrews – the species that are most alike – and those of about 30 other mammal species. Primates and colugos shared seven indels, which are rare genetic changes. Other mammals sometimes shared one change, but most of the time scientists did not find any changes, making them very rare. One of the paper's authors, William J. Murphy, calls these changes "historic signatures of relationship." In their second round of study, researchers used computer programs to compare similarities and differences in 13,000 base pairs of DNA from five close animal groups – Primates, Dermoptera and Scandentia, Rodentia and Lagomorpha. The computer programs revealed that colugos and primates were the closest relatives. The research team suggests that this new knowledge should be used to make sure that culogos have their full genome sequenced. Currently, the decisionmakers have only planned to have a less precise "draft" sequence generated for colugos. This study appears in the 2 November issue of the journal Science. ###
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