Va. Tech out to crack genetic code of turkeys

Virginia Tech, whose teams are known as the Fighting Gobblers, is leading a consortium trying to determine the genetic sequence of that Thanksgiving Day staple -- the domestic turkey.

Announcement of the consortium's effort comes days after a team spearheaded by Pennsylvania State University announced it has established the genome sequence of the woolly mammoth. Woolly mammoths are extinct.

Turkeys, in contrast, are delicious. The new consortium hopes cracking the holiday bird's genome sequence will help breeders make turkeys meatier, more robust and tastier.

(A quick bit of science: To sequence a genome is to determine the exact order of the chemical components that make up an organism's entire genetic material. Not everybody can do it.)

Otto Folkerts, associate director of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Tech, said group members began talking turkey late last year and officially formed this spring.

"What we were looking for was a big project to sink our teeth into that would show our capability," Folkerts said. "The chicken genome had been done several years ago. But the turkey is kind of the orphan of the animal genome."

Also, he noted, "the Hokie Bird is our mascot, and it's no accident we decided on the turkey."

The group hopes to win the necessary funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to start the $1 million project next spring. With money in hand, it should take only a few months to get to the bottom of the turkey genome, Folkerts said.

The consortium, titled the Turkey Genome Sequencing Consortium, is made up of researchers at Tech, the bioinformatics institute, the Roslin Institute in Scotland, Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota and Utah State University.
Contact Rex Bowman at (540) 344-3612 or .