Tiger, lion and leopard genomes could aid in big cats' conservation

Comparison of the genome of a Siberian tiger with those of other big cats provides a resource to study big cats' conservation, South Korean researchers said. Researchers with South Korea's Personal Genomics Institute sequenced the whole genome of an Amur, or Siberian, tiger, assembled by using software tools, Chinese genomic-affiliated BGI said Friday in a release. Among other things, the researchers learned the Siberian tiger displayed more than 95 percent similarity to the genome of the domestic cat. Researchers also sequenced the genomes of a white Bengal tiger, an African lion, a white African lion and a snow leopard, using advanced sequencing technology, and aligned them using the tiger and domestic cat genome sequences, BGI said. They found a number of Panthera lineage-specific and felid-specific amino acid changes that they said could affect the metabolism pathways of carnivores. The researchers discovered evidence that genes related to muscle strength, energy metabolism and sensory nerves appeared to be undergoing rapid evolution in the tiger, which could help in conservation efforts, BGI said.