Mapping Frog, Newt Genomes for Medical Discovery
The golden poison dart frog (Phylobates terribilis) is one of the most toxic animals in the world. The frogs, which measure only five centimeters, have enough poison to kill ten grown men.
The toxin in these frogs is so effective, explains Denis Machado, a doctoral student from the Inter-units Graduate Program in Bioinformatics at the University of São Paulo (USP), that the indigenous Emberá people of Colombia have used it for centuries to tip their blowgun darts for hunting, giving the species its name…