The Most Interesting Creature in the World

“We also engaged with staff and students at UNSW, by bringing two pure alpine dingoes from the Bargo Dingo Sanctuary onto campus for everyone to meet,” says Professor Ballard.

The cutting edge PacBio technology allows DNA to be sequenced in long sections containing tens of thousands of bases, rather than in shorter sections of a few hundred bases, as with existing techniques. This can reveal important rearrangements in the genome that affect gene expression.

The Australian team behind the Sandy project also includes Professor Claire Wade of the University of Sydney, Dr Richard Melvin of UNSW, Dr Robert Zammit of the Vineyard Veterinary Hospital and Dr Andre Minoche of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

UNSW has a strong reputation in genomics research, with scientists at the university’s Ramaciotti Centre for Genomics having worked on the genomes of a variety of other important native creatures, including the koala, the Tasmanian devil, the wombat, the platypus, the Queensland fruit fly and the Wollemi Pine.

“We’re very proud of UNSW’s history of contribution to genomics and we are delighted that Sandy’s genome will now be sequenced as the prize for winning this competition,” says UNSW molecular biologist and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) Professor Merlin Crossley.

“Australia has so many interesting animals to sequence and the results enhance our understanding of evolution and biology and help improve agriculture and pest management”.

For more information about Sandy Maliki and her siblings, Eggie Warrigal and Didi Mirigung, see their Pure Dingo Facebook page.

Dingoes were introduced to Australia about 5000 years ago. It is widely accepted they were not domesticated by Indigenous Australians. Pure dingoes are becoming increasingly rare as the native animals interbreed with wild dogs and domestic dogs, and are targeted as pests by landowners.

Contacts and sources:
Professor Bill Ballard