Frogs and humans are kissing cousins

What's the difference between a frog, a chicken, a mouse and a human? Not as much as you'd think, according to an analysis of the first sequenced amphibian genome.

The genome of the western clawed frog, Xenopus tropicalis, has now been analysed by an international consortium of scientists from 24 institutions, and joins a list of sequenced model organisms including the mouse, zebrafish, nematode and fruit fly. What's most surprising, researchers say, is how closely the amphibian's genome resembles that of the mouse and the human, with large swathes of frog DNA on several chromosomes having genes arranged in the same order as in these mammals. The results of the analysis are published in Science this week1.

"There are megabases of sequence where gene order has changed very little since the last common ancestor" of amphibians, birds and mammals about 360 million years ago, says bioinformaticist Uffe Hellsten at the US Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, a co-author on the study.

That close genomic relationship doesn't hold true for all vertebrates, he notes. The zebrafish genome, for example, shows a much different gene order.

Such conservation has important evolutionary implications. "By comparing the genomes of these different animals, you can really tell what the ancestral complement of genes may have been," says Richard Harland, a molecular and developmental biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who also took part in the study.

In addition, says Harland, it belies the view that genomes as a rule evolve quickly. "I think the old expectation was that there was a lot of chromosome rearrangement, but I think increasingly we are finding that chromosomal translocations are pretty rare."

The similarity in genome sequence also validates the frog as a human disease model. Within conserved sequences in X. tropicalis, the researchers found genes that are similar to 80% of human genes known to be associated with diseases. "It's going to make genetic screens in Xenopus immediately more useful," says Frank Conlon, a geneticist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, who is not an author of the new study but helped to assign biological functions to genes in the sequence.

Having the sequence in hand, he adds, provides a crucial tool for bringing a host of Xenopus assays on basic biological functions — such as cell division, protein expression and phenotype identification — down to the genomic level.
Prince among frogs

X. tropicalis has gained a foothold as a model organism in the past decade, but it isn't the most widely studied frog species. Since the 1940s, its cousin the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, has been the go-to organism for developmental and cell biologists. Both species are easy to raise, having large eggs and transparent tadpoles that are especially conducive to studies of development and embryology.

Left-handed pets....

SCIENTISTS have discovered that most pets — including cats, dogs, parrots and even fish — are right or left-”handed”. They prefer using one paw, foot or eye over the other.

Researchers previously assumed that the trait of being left or right-handed — known as lateralisation — was confined to humans, and that animals were ambidextrous. They have now found that nearly every creature has evolved to specialise in using one side over the other.

In cats, scientists have concluded that females tend to favour their right paw when trying to extract a treat from a jar, while toms favour their left. The same gender divide applies in dogs.

Fish tend to have a dominant eye when looking at potential predators. Right-eyed fish circle threats clockwise and left-eyed fish move anti-clockwise.

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Faisalabad torture victim, in her own words

Female tortured in police station

A woman was made to lie down on her stomach and tortured in a police station of Faisalabad in the presence of senior male officers who appeared to be taking pleasure out of watching the humiliating act.

It has become a common scene where accused, normally males, are subjected to flogging by police. But what happened in the above police station is enough to make humanity feel ashamed where the woman was tortured and abused before senior male police officers.

A female DSP and SHO Women Zahida Perveen were also present on the occasion.

Women constables slapped the woman, wearing red Shalwar Kameez, whoe was later made to lie down on her stomach for flogging on the orders of male police officers.

SHO Nasrullah Niazi, on the occasion, appears to be talking to the woman, being subjected to the humiliation, about learning some lesson.

The woman in the TV footage appears to be shouting, asking the female and male police personnel to stop the insulting act.

Woman torture story...

At least 45 dead in Somalia mosque attack

Somalia is in the same boat like us, and mosques are under-attack as well.

Twin explosions at a mosque in Somalia's capital on Saturday killed at least 45 people and wounded many more, hospital officials and the African Union's peacekeeping force in the country said.

The mosque is in the heart of Mogadishu's Bakara Market, a stronghold of Al-Shabaab, the militant group waging a war against the government in an effort to implement a stricter form of Islamic law.

The bloody incident took place about 1 p.m., according to Ali Muse, a local ambulance service director. He said hundreds were wounded, and he expects the casualty figures to rise.

Fighting ensued in the city hours after the incident, when a pro-government militia group slugged it out with militants.

An Al-Shabaab spokesman, Ali Dhere, initially blamed "foreign elements" for the attack, but an AU peacekeeping official said no group has claimed responsibility.

Dahir Mohamud Gelle, the government information minister, called the attack "barbaric" and said it illustrates "a total lack of wisdom and a disrespect to the holy places."

The special representative of the chairman of the AU Commission for Somalia, Ambassador Boubacar Gaoussou Diarra, deplored the killings of innocents and any attacks targeting mosques and other public places.

What was the last mission of Khalid Khwaja?

Hamid Mir
Sunday
May 02, 2010

The last mission of ex-ISI officer Khalid Khwaja failed but his assassination exposed many hidden secrets, including differences between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban, and has put a spotlight on his highly complex underworld life, as a mediator, sometimes on behalf of the Americans, a power-broker, a mover and shaker besides an ardent Islamic preacher.

Squadron Leader (retd) Khalid Khwaja had been playing an active behind-the-scene role in domestic politics of Pakistan for the last 22 years. He became an important international player 11 years ago when he first tried to establish direct links between the Kashmiri militants and the Clinton Administration but failed.

He had been trying to establish direct contacts between the USA and the Taliban for the last five years. He also tried to mediate between the Pakistan Army and the Taliban many times in the last two years but all his efforts failed due to lack of trust between him and the current military leadership of Pakistan. His known contacts with some former CIA officials and an American businessman Mansoor Ijaz also created problems for him. He was intelligent enough in maintaining links with Americans and their critics like Hameed Gul at the same time but unfortunately he could not anticipate the seriousness of his adversaries, who did not miss any opportunity to strike against friends and foes alike.

He was sacked from the ISI on the direct orders of General Ziaul Haq in 1987 but he remained active with the ISI even after his sacking. He was the right hand man of former DG ISI Hameed Gul in 1988 and played a significant role in the making of the anti-PPP political alliance, the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI).

He claimed that he arranged a meeting between Osama bin Ladin and Nawaz Sharif in Saudi Arabia in 1989. He made this revelation just a few weeks before the dismissal of Nawaz Sharif government in 1999. Khalid Khwaja tried to convince Nawaz Sharif not to support Asif Zardari as president in August 2008 but the PML-N leader did not listen to him.

Khalid Khwaja was assassinated by a group of Punjabi Taliban on April 30 near Mir Ali in North Wazirastan. He was kidnapped on March 26 along with another former ISI official Col (retd) Ameer Sultan and a British born Pakistani filmmaker Asad Qureshi. An unknown group of Punjabi Taliban, with the name of Asian Tigers, alleged that Khalid Khwaja was working for the ISI and the CIA but that was not the main reason behind his killing.

A few weeks before his abduction, he met Taliban leader Waliur Rehman Mehsud in North Waziristan and handed over a list of some militants and alleged that they were working for Indian spy agencies. Within a few hours of that meeting, the vehicle of Waliur Rehman was attacked by a US drone but the Taliban commander survived. Waliur Rehman immediately informed the Punjabi Taliban to be careful about Khwaja, who then decided to trap him.

A spokesman for Punjabi Taliban hinted on Saturday that “charges against Col Imam are not strong and we may release him”. He also admitted that the Afghan Taliban were also putting pressure on the Punjabi Taliban to release the former ISI colonel.

While talking to this scribe on phone from North Waziristan, the spokesman reacted to the statement of Khalid Khwaja’s wife, who declared that her husband was a martyr because he was killed by some criminals.

The spokesman for the Punjabi Taliban said that both Mr and Mrs Khalid Khwaja played an active role in Lal Masjid tragedy in July 2007. They forced late Abdul Rashid Ghazi not to surrender but disappeared when the operation started.

Some friends of Khalid Khwaja, however, tell a different story. They say that Khwaja was arrested just a few days before the operation in Lal Masjid but they also admit that Khwaja was not supporting the surrender.

It is also learnt that Khalid Khwaja was investigated by a three-member committee of the militants for more than four weeks. Initially, Khwaja claimed that he had moved a petition in the Lahore High Court against the drone attacks along with former PML-N MNA Javed Ibrahim Paracha and he came to North Waziristan for recording the statements of drone victims to be produced in the court on April 6.

The militants confronted him as to why on the one hand he was opposing the drone attacks but on the other hand he was trying to establish contacts between the USA and the Taliban. The militants claimed that he arranged a meeting between US Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes and a religious cleric Javed Ibrahim Paracha in 2005 in Serena Hotel, Islamabad. They also produced some articles downloaded from the Internet and asked about his links with former CIA officials, James Woolsey and William Casey.

Khwaja had met these former CIA officials through an American businessman Mansoor Ijaz, who was very close to the Bill Clinton administration. Ijaz played a key role in forcing the Sudanese government to expel Osama bin Ladin from Khartoum in 1996 and helped Khwaja to establish direct links between the Taliban and the Bush administration in October 1999 when he wanted Mulla Omar to meet James Woolsey to avert an American attack on Afghanistan. Mulla Omar refused to meet the then CIA leader.

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Khalid Khawaja

Khalid Khawaja was killed after the confession, but I wouldn't buy the statement given by him in distress. I would like to wait for detailed insights.