Orangutans colonise our gene trees

(you wouldn't expect orangutans out of the trees, would you?)

Ensembl 49 will contain good news on the comparative genomics side. Apart from the new whole-genome multiple alignments for which we can now handle segmental duplications and infer ancestral sequences (see Ewan's post on the 20th of January), two new species will be available, namely horse and orangutan.

We are especially excited about the new orangutan genome as it is a key species in the primate lineage, in between the human, chimp and gorilla group and the Old World monkeys. Its inclusion in our gene trees will result in a better resolution of the phylogeny of the primate genes.