
Octopus’ sophistication driven by hundreds of previously unknown genes - Audiophilip
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/08/octopus-sophistication-driven-by-hundreds-of-previously-unknown-genes/
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danharaj
I really hope cephalopods survive what we're doing to the oceans. Not to
mention farming them for food. The biosphere is a treasure and losing these
species would be a loss inexpressible in dollars.

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11thEarlOfMar
In case you missed it, this out-of-the-water predatory behavior of an octopus
is astounding to us mid-west folks:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5fZu-1bt6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5fZu-1bt6Y)

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owlmonkey
If they were really interested in discovering unknown genes, they should have
used PacBio to sequence the whole genome instead of just 83% of it via
Illumina. That assembly quality ("a contig N50-length of 5.4 kb and a scaffold
N50-length of 470 kb") is truly awful compared to a PacBio assembly.

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folli
And also about a magnitude more expensive

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owlmonkey
Not any more, and especially not compared to the HiSeq 2000 used for that
paper. PacBio's raw sequencing cost is now about on par with where the HiSeq
was when it first launched. And because of the error profile you don't need as
much coverage and it's a lot less effort to assemble. So the total project
cost now is comparable, even if the raw sequencing cost is higher still.

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louithethrid
I have a question: Can genetic information be zipped ? As in a library of
words, that restores condensed information to its full density?

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richmarr
Huh, interesting.

To look at that from the other direction... what are the implications if DNA
is already optimally compressed?

TBH I'd be surprised if DNA were optimised for size rather than ease of
access, but admit that I know next-to-nothing about it.

