Hopping news - how the kangaroo got its bounce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tammar_Wallaby.jpg

Researchers have laid bare the DNA of a kangaroo species for the first time.

An international team of scientists, writing in the Biomed Central journal, Genome Biology, say they have even indentified a gene responsible for the kangaroo's hop.

The group focussed on a small species of kangaroo that inhabits islands off Australia's south and western coasts.

The tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii) is only the third marsupial to have its genome sequenced. Making up the trio are the Tasmanian devil and the South American opossum.

Gene map may pull Devil back from brink

Efforts to save the Tasmanian devil from extinction have been given a boost by the publication of the entire genetic sequence of two devils, the ABC reports.

Tasmanian devils are small carnivorous marsupials, native to Tasmania. The remaining population is in dramatic decline due to a highly contagious cancer called devil facial tumour disease (DFTD).

Thirty scientists from Australia, Denmark and the USA collaborated on the study, which is published in this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Former Australian researcher Professor Vanessa Hayes of the J Craig Venter Institute in San Diego - and one of the study's three lead authors - says DFTD was first spotted in 1996.

Cedric and Spirit's genome sequence joins that of Salem, a female devil whose sequence was completed last year by researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, England.