Dogs, chimps, people, rats, mice and cows came first, but finally the finicky feline joins the club of mammals whose DNA has been decoded and sequenced. The breakthrough cat is a four-year-old Abyssinian named Cinnamon who lives in a lab-bred colony at University of Missouri-Columbia. No word on whether cans of tuna or catnip were used in luring Cinnamon down from her genomic pedestal, but as you can tell from the picture, she's way cuter than Dolly.
The now-decoded cat genome will provide insight into both human and feline diseases; as any cat lover knows, cats get hundreds of diseases that are similar to human counterparts, including HIV, leukemia and irritable bowel syndrome (believe it -- it ain't pretty).
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