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Flourishing Zone
The Wellcome Sanger Institute is one of the world’s leading genomics research centres. In celebration of its 25th Anniversary, the Institute is going to decode the DNA of 25 UK species for the first time…and you can vote to decide 5 of them!
Canada geese are really successful at living in human-altered areas like town parks | Image: Daniel D’Auria
From 6th November – 8th December, a team of scientists and wildlife experts will each champion a species they think should have its entire DNA sequence decoded.
This is the Flourishing Zone, which has nine species competing for your votes. The species in this zone are on the up; finding out how they’re so successful might help other species to survive. Some of these species survive in extreme conditions, others have previously been endangered but now are doing well and some have been brought over to the UK where they are now taking over!
You may already know bacteria are pretty good at surviving just about anywhere. In this zone, you’ll meet Nostoc commune, a very talented bacteria found on rocks and water in almost every part of the world. The Canada Goose is another flourishing species. As the name suggests, these birds were brought over from Canada and they’ve now successfully spread across most of the UK.
It’s not all good though, this increasing population of birds often cause damage to crops and their droppings are causing problems for human health!