English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Background  The red panda ( Ailurus fulgens ) is a riddle of morphology, making it hard to tell whether it is an ursid, a procyonid, a mustelid, or a member of its own family. Previous genetic studies have given quite contradictory results as to its phylogenetic placement.    Results  A recently developed whole genome-based algorithm, the Whole Genome K-mer Signature algorithm was used to analyze the genomes of 28 species of Carnivora, including  A. fulgens  and several felid, ursid, mustelid, one mephitid species. This algorithm has the advantage of holistically using all the information in the genomes of these species. Being a genomics-based algorithm, it also reduces stochastic error to a minimum. Besides the whole genome, the mitochondrial DNA from 52 mustelids, mephitids, ursids, procyonids and  A. fulgens  were aligned to draw further phylogenetic inferences.  The results from the whole genome study suggested that  A. fulgens  is a member of the mustelid clade ( p  = 9·10 − 97 ).  A. fulgens  also separates from the mephitid  Spilogala gracilis . The giant panda,  Ailuropoda melanoleuca  also clusters away from  A. fulgens , together with other ursids ( p  = 1.2·10 − 62 ). This could be due to the geographic isolation of  A. fulgens  from other mustelid species. However, results from the mitochondrial study as well as neighbor-joining methods based on the sequence identity matrix suggests that  A. fulgens  forms a monophyletic group. A Maximum Likelihood tree suggests that  A. fulgens  and Ursidae form a monophyletic group, although the bootstrap value is weak.    Conclusions  The main conclusion that we can draw from this study is that on a whole genome level  A. fulgens  possibly belongs to the mustelid clade, and not an ursid or a mephitid. This despite the fact that previously some researchers classified  A. fulgens  and  A. melanoleuca  as relatives. Since the genotype determines the phenotype, molecular-based classification takes precedence over morphological classifications. This affirms the results of some previous studies, which studied smaller portions of the genome. However, mitochondrial analyses based on neighbor-joining and maximum likelihood methods suggest otherwise.    Supplementary Information  The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12864-021-07531-3.

A tail of two pandas— whole genome k-mer signature analysis of the red panda (Ailurus fulgens) and the Giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)