Birds are the only surviving dinosaurs on our planet.  By 2010, only three bird species (chicken, turkey, and zebra finch) had had their genome sequenced.  The Avian Genomics Project selected 45 additional species for sequencing.  These new species represent all 32 neognath and two of the five palaeognath orders.  This allowed for a large-scale phylogenomics analysis to investigate the bird family tree, and applied comparative genomics methods to address various questions such as avian genome evolution, sex chromosome evolution, molecular basis of flight, loss of teeth, vocal learning, and endangered birds.  In addition, while consuming this large body of data, new bioinformatic methods and software tools were developed.  On December 12th, 2014, the first findings of this project were released in eight simultaneous papers in a special issue of Science and 20 more in Genome Biology, GigaScience, and other journals.  For everything you ever wanted to know about birds, visit their website at:

http://avian.genomics.cn/