Genes of famed big cat Machhli to be mapped

A team of geneticists, conservation biologists and wildlife officials are in the process of preparing a genetic map — that is, tracing out the sequence of genes — from Machhli’s DNA, which was extracted at the time of her death. Dr. Uma Ramakrishnan, at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, is leading Machhli’s genome analysis.