A wild-born, pure Australian desert dingo called Sandy Maliki has taken out first place in the World’s Most Interesting Genome competition.
The UNSW-led proposal to have Sandy’s DNA decoded beat four other finalists for the Pacific Biosciences SMRT Grant, which provides cutting-edge sequencing of the complete genome of a particularly fascinating plant or animal.
Sandy and her sister and brother were discovered as three-week old pups in the Australian desert near the Strzelecki Track in 2014 by NSW animal lovers, Barry and Lyn Eggleton, who have hand-reared them ever since.
