Unless your father was a prince with a shady past, you probably haven’t thought much about how related you are to a frog lately. But it turns out that about 80 percent of the genes known to cause diseases in humans have counterparts in the genome of Xenopus tropicalis—the western clawed frog native to sub-Saharan Africa.
Scientists at the Joint Genome Institute in California revealed the Xenopus genome in the April 30 issue of Science. It’s the first frog to have its genetic code cracked and the first amphibian.
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