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First gene identity card for wild panda
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LIKE their human companions, 78 pandas in the wild of central China's Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces recently got their identity cards.
On the card are printed two parts of codes, one numerical code representing the country, province, protection zone and family the panda belongs to, and the other a genetic bar code revealing its sex and personal feature.
It signals that the account management of pandas has stepped into the genetic era, said Professor Fang Shenghuo with Life Sciences Institute of Zhejiang University, who heads the research team under the Ministry of Education.
By recognizing the gene card through the computer, detailed information concerning the panda, including what it looks like, would be obtained immediately.
Only one in 1.6 billion pandas are likely to share the same genetic code, Fang said.
Academic inability has hindered wild animal researches around the globe from obtaining whole-genetic DNA, because it is not allowed to get samples by hurting the endangered animal.
On the other side, excrement and hair, the only traces left by animals in the wild, have in them only scraps of their genes.
However, the development of DNA fingerprinting probe and the extraction methods for genetic DNA of giant panda, initiated by the research group, can extract all the genomic DNA from its excrement.
Back in 1998, a joint research group with scientists from Zhejiang University, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chengdu University, swept through some 900 square kilometres of area in two protection zones, Foping in Shaanxi Province and Tangjiahe in Sichuan Province, to get excrement and hair samples from pandas.
From the samples, the scientists extracted all of the genetic DNA in laboratory, and further, through a gene probe, obtained their gene fingerprint patterns.
Zhang Anju, a famed panda expert, said that the method has opened a new approach for studying the diversity of pandas, and therefore it is important for not only panda preservation, but also the protection of its living ecology as well.
Authorities in the circle confirmed that this method is applicable to all vegetarians, and can trace the entire family tree of the animal.
So far, Chinese scientists have already completed a management system on gene identities and an account data system in the two zones.
Fang expected that in time, all wild animal zones will have similar gene data system established.
(Xinhua)
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