Author:
D. Andrew Merriwether

Date of Publication:
unknown

Publication:
‘To appear in the forthcoming AOBA “Alpaca Breeder’s Handbook”’

Excerpt:
Humans and alpacas share many things in common, along with the rest of the animal kingdom, including how they pass their genes on to the next generation. Humans have over 20,000 genes spread across 23 pairs of chromosome and some 3 billion base pairs of DNA. Alpacas likely have between 15,000 and 20,000 genes (just a guess at this point) spread across 37 pairs of chromosomes and unknown billions of base pairs of DNA. The first complete alpaca genome was sequenced in 2008, so many of these statistics will shortly become known.

Read the rest of the article: http://www.northsoundalpacas.org/uploads/9/9/4/7/9947269/aobageneticsforalpaca_breeders0610082.pdf