Where do Chickens Come From?

Southeast Asia apparently. Genetically speaking? Turns out our feathered friends descend from one bad-ass mother of a bird, the jungle fowl. Head over to Greg Laden's blablablog for discussion of new genetic evidence showing that the modern day chicken is actually a hybrid of at least two different wild species of the jungle fowl, one with grey skin and one with yellow skin. Some commenter also points out on his website that these birds may have been initially domesticated for cock-fighting rather than food. Check it out if you want to read more about cock-fighting.

Continuing along with his fetish of birds/southeast Asia/hybridization, Laden also discusses a new paper on the evolution of the flu virus. The authors present evidence showing that some particularly nasty flu epidemics of the 20th century arose as a result of segmental reassortment between the genomes of different strains. This reminds me that it's been a while since we've had a good old-fashioned bird flu scare. Good to know people are still studying this.

For some reason I'm now imagining being pecked apart by a Jungle Fowl carrying a lethal strain of H1N1. Ouch. Bad way to go...

Oncolytic Salmonella: Dirty Poultry for Cancer Therapy?

Loeffler et al. report on the anti-tumor activity of an attenuated Salmonella bacterial strain engineered to express the mammalian immunostimulatory gene LIGHT, online this month in PNAS. How about a clinical trial on chickens with tumors? Or will Kentucky Fried Chicken give the Salmonella to their birds and market a new 6-piece anti-cancer meal? "Will that be a white or brown therapy today?". Just kidding. Oncolytic bacterial therapy for cancer is of course a very legitimate and promising area of therapeutic research. Clinical trials and manufacture of biological therapeutics are highly regulated and controlled to ensure human safety. Sorry KFC.