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DNA Shows NYC Rats are Different Around Town

12/9/2017

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New York City Has Genetically Distinct ‘Uptown’ and ‘Downtown’ Rats
A graduate student sequenced rats all over Manhattan, and discovered how the city affects their genetic diversity.
  • SARAH ZHAN
  • NOV 29, 2017
  • The Atlantic Magazine
New York City is a place where rats climb out of toilets, bite babies in their cribs, crawl on sleeping commuters, take over a Taco Bell restaurant, and drag an entire slice of pizza down the subway stairs. So as Matthew Combs puts it, “Rats in New York, where is there a better place to study them?”

Combs is a graduate student at Fordham University and, like many young people, he came to New York to follow his dreams. His dreams just happened to be studying urban rats. For the past two years, Combs and his colleagues have been trapping and sequencing the DNA of brown rats in Manhattan, producing the most comprehensive genetic portrait yet of the city’s most dominant rodent population.
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As a whole, Manhattan’s rats are genetically most similar to those from Western Europe, especially Great Britain and France. They most likely came on ships in the mid-18th century, when New York was still a British colony. Combs was surprised to find Manhattan’s rats so homogenous in origin. New York has been the center of so much trade and immigration, yet the descendants of these Western European rats have held on.
Continue Reading at The Atlantic
1 Comment
samedayessay review link
12/2/2019 02:55:51 am

This is actually the first time that I have heard of some study that is all about rats. Mr. Combs is an amazing and brilliant young man who actually made this study successful and it is such an honor for me to know his study. I don't know how I can use the information I have learned from this in my everyday life but it is still good to learn something different and unique once in a while. Well, all thanks to the person behind this study who have actually exerted all of his efforts and time just to make this possible. There will surely be other people who will find this helpful.

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