I currently do not have any hybids, although I do have a couple of hybrid projects (new ones) I have thought about. I don't have an axe to grind one way or the other, but I will never understand why this topic fuels such passionate polar opinions. In reality, whether we like it or not, when you really come down to it everything (and I mean every living thing, plant and animal) is a hybrid to one degree or another. The only truly "purebred organisms are clones. At least half the current population of the world has food to eat directly as a result of Hybridization. Almost every food crop and animal is a hybrid. Every "purebred" dog in the snobbish blue blood American Kennel Club started out as a hybrid not too many years ago, and it was only through the use of "un-natural" selection techniques that these breeds became "pure". Like it or not almost every living thing on earth shares at least 85% of their DNA with every other living thing. Think about the following excerpt below the next time you throw a mouse hopper to a hatchling.

To each his own.

Grant Whitmer



Man vs. mouse

-- Mice and humans both have about 30,000 genes - and share 99% of them. About 1,200 new genes have been discovered in the human because of mouse-human genome comparisons.



-- It might be said that we are essentially mice without tails - but we even have the genes that could make a tail.



-- 90 percent of genes associated with disease are identical in the human and the mouse, supporting the use of mice as model organisms.



The mouse in genetic history



75 million-125 million years ago



The common ancestor of mice and humans known as Eomaia scansoria was the earliest known representative of the Eutheria lineage, which gave rise to all modern placental mammals.



6 million years ago



The genus Mus is established, renamed later via Latin from Sanskrit word "mush," meaning to steal. The house mouse, Mus musculus, doesn't appear as a species until after the last ice age, about 8,000 B.C.



1900



Hobbyists selectively breed house mice with different color coats, among them agouti and satin, still used by laboratories today.



1909



Lab mice are developed from the first inbred mouse strain, known as DBA (dilute brown non-agouti).



1972



First computer database for mouse genetics.



1982



First transgenic mouse.



1987-89



First mouse to have a specifically targeted gene disabled or "knocked out."



1998



First cloned mouse.



1999



Researchers launch a concerted effort to sequence the mouse genome.



2001



First draft of human genome published. Celera sells a multi-mouse genome sequence.



2002



Researchers analyze mouse chromosome 16 and find similarities with the human chromosome 21. A framework map of the mouse genome is developed.



December 2002



The Mouse Genome Sequencing Consortium publishes its efforts of a high- quality sequence and analysis of the mouse genome.



Sources: Wellcome; Nature



Chronicle Graphic



E-mail Sabin Russell at srussell@sfchronicle.com.



This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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