Mapping dolphin proteins may benefit human health

New York: Mapping all the proteins found in the dolphin genome could pave the way for finding a new way to treat some common diseases that affect humans, say researchers.

"Dolphins and humans are very, very similar creatures," Ben Neely of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said in a statement.

"As mammals, we share a number of proteins and our bodies function in many similar ways, even though we are terrestrial and dolphins live in the water all their lives," said Neely, who along with his colleagues created a detailed, searchable index of all the proteins found in the bottlenose dolphin genome.

A genome is the complete set of genetic material present in an organism. Although a detailed map of the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) genome was first compiled in 2008, recent technological breakthroughs enabled the creation of a new, more exhaustive map of all of the proteins produced by the dolphins' DNA.

Comparing the proteins of humans and these other mammals is already providing researchers with a wealth of new information about how the human body works.