Shades of grey
Often grey squirrels are seen merely as nuisances that pilfer bird food and debark trees. They’re held responsible for the plight of native red squirrels, too. But they are the closest many of us come to wild mammals, and at this time of year their frantic nose-totail mating chases are very entertaining. Now the Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire is sequencing the species’ entire genome, together with that of its red relative. The ultimate goal is to decode the squirrelpox immunity of grey squirrels in case it can be passed to reds.
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Sanger Institute: sanger.ac.uk