Cat's eye view of DNA sheds light on human disease

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first full genetic map of a cat -- a domestic pedigreed Abyssinian -- is already shedding light on a common cause of blindness in humans and may offer insights into AIDS and other diseases, researchers reported on Wednesday.

And the cat genome shows some surprising qualities that cats and humans appear to have uniquely in common, the researchers report in the journal Genome Research.

"We can start to interpret them in terms of one of evolution's special creations, which is also probably one of the greatest predators that ever lived," Dr. Stephen O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute, who helped lead the study, said in a telephone interview.

The cat, named Cinnamon, is descended from lab cats bred to develop retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that causes blindness and which affects 1 in 3,500 Americans.

O'Brien said a study of her genes can help uncover some of the causes of the incurable condition and may help find treatments for it.

Cats also are important for studying other diseases, O'Brien said. "The reasons why the cat genome is cool go on for about an hour," he said.

For instance, they are the only animals besides humans who naturally become sick from immune deficiency viruses. People get HIV, which causes AIDS, while the feline immunodeficiency virus or FIV causes a similar disease in cats.

The discovery of feline leukemia virus in the 1960s led scientists to realize that viruses can cause cancer.