On Aug. 5, 2014, a team of scientists from around the world led by Baylor College of Medicine and Washington University in St. Louis announced it had completed the genome sequence of the common marmoset – the first sequence of a New World Monkey. The study provided new information about the marmoset’s unique rapid reproductive system, physiology and growth, shedding new light on primate biology and evolution. The team published the work in the journal Nature Genetics.

With the sequence of the marmoset, the team revealed for the first time the genome of a non-human primate in the New World monkeys, which represents a separate branch in the primate evolutionary tree that is more distant from humans than those whose genomes have been studied in detail before. The sequence allows researchers to broaden their ability to study the human genome and its history as revealed by comparison with other primates.

The sequencing was conducted jointly by Baylor and Washington University and led by Dr. Kim Worley, professor in the Human Genome Sequencing Center, and Rogers at Baylor, and Drs. Richard K. Wilson, director, and Wesley Warren of The Genome Institute at Washington University, in collaboration with Dr. Suzette Tardif of The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and the Southwest National Primate Research Center.