Beaver1.jpg
A beaver named Filbert takes a shower at the Oregon Zoo. During an annual "well beaver" checkup in August, a veterinarian took a blood sample that will be used by Oregon State University researchers who plan to sequence the beaver's genome.
(Oregon State University/Oregon Zoo)
The field of genome sequencing didn't exist in 1952, when Oregon State University claimed the North American beaver as its mascot.
Now, Oregon State scientists aim to sequence the beaver's genome, becoming the first Pac-12 conference school to analyze its mascot's DNA.
Researchers are 60 percent of the way to raising $30,000 by Friday through crowd-sourcing for the project on the OSU Foundation's site. They say gene analysis will help them understand how the continent's largest rodent digests wood, builds dams and creates habitat for other animals.
"Sequencing a full mammal by one university is a bit of an undertaking, but we have the capability to do that," said Brent Kronmiller, an Oregon State specialist in bioinformatics, which uses computing, statistics, math and engineering to analyze biological data.
When scientists sequence a genome, they determine the complete order of DNA in an organism, identifying genes that determine hereditary traits and build proteins to make bodies function. No one has ever sequenced a beaver, Oregon's state animal.
Oregon State scientists got the idea last year when University of California at Santa Cruz researchers launched a crowd-funding campaign to map the genome of their mascot, the banana slug. In 2010, Virginia Tech researchers worked with an international consortium to map the genetic blueprint for the domesticated turkey, in honor of the school's Hokie gobbler mascot.
A $900,000 federal grant backed Virginia Tech's turkey project. But beavers and banana slugs lack the market value of turkeys, which explains why researchers in Corvallis and Santa Cruz have sought crowd funding instead of government support. Contributions are tax-deductible and $1,000 donors get newly discovered beaver genes named after them.
Oregon State researchers will use genetic material from a blood sample obtained in August from an Oregon Zoo beaver named Filbert
They'll run it through a sequencer, a powerful computer that sorts through the material, finding pairs of nucleotides that connect strands of DNA.
"We're guessing we'll find somewhere between 2.5 billion to 5 billion base pairs," Kronmiller said. The human genome contains about 3 billion of these pairs.
Kronmiller expects genome sequencing to take two weeks, and identifying genes to take a couple of months. Scientists post the information on publicly available national genome databases.
From there, researchers will examine genes to determine which animals are related to beavers and how the rodents function. They're already familiar with beaver trivia, such as the fact that the animal's orange teeth never stop growing.
The rodents can chew through 3-foot-diameter tree trunks, dam rivers and build houses from branches and mud. Busy beavers create habitat for salmon and other river and forest species.
Oregon State's Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing, which will conduct the study, has sequenced genomes of other mammals, in projects conducted for clients.
"Right now we're doing a bunch of fish and fungus genomes, and we possibly have a bunch of insects coming up," he said.
Kronmiller said the beaver-genome mascot stunt is not one that the University of Oregon, archrival to Oregon State, can replicate.
"The duck has already been sequenced," he said, "by a research group in China."
-- Richard Read
503-294-5135
Follow on Twitter: @ReadOregonian