Daniel M. Ibrahim

This is a mega-mega cool project. I hope you make it and I'm excited for the results!!! Best of luck

Really hope you get funded! I'll keep my fingers crossed. d

Hi Nancy, I very much share your opinion and all cats I ever had were adopted from the previous owners, because they couldn't keep the cats anymore. Now that being said, we all know that cat breeding is a reality and we can't just stop this. And one of the bad things about breeding is the very fact of inbreeding. This leads to the accumulation of genetic variants that - in parallel to the animals having whatever desired feature - are often also ill. This very much happens with HCM in a variety of breeds and Maine Coons is only one of them. Non-bred "street cats" are usually much more healthy than inbred fancy races, because variety is good!! So why are we suggesting this stretch goal at all? We were asking us following question: Is there something that we - as GENETICISTS - could do that is links cats, health, BUB, and genetics? And our idea is that if we would try to identify mutations that cause HCM in a specific breed, then at least the breeders (that do exist) would be able to breed cats that are more healthy in the future. We don't want to provide knowledge to breed a special fur color, or face or anything. We want to provide knowledge to not breed cats with a heart disease! Finally, you can be sure that your donation will not support this. Our idea for the stretch goal is an independent project and the money we collected up to now only covers the costs of sequencing BUB. That is the current price tag on sequencing a genome and we will use it for nothing else. And I have to emphasize again how incredibly grateful we are for your donation and we can't thank you enough! We truly mean this and I hope that you see our best intentions of proposing the stretch goal that we did. If it's OK for you I would update the above lab note with some of my answers above. Best wishes - daniel

Hey Rhiannon and Anthony. Awesome to get your support. We're already looking forward to get going and keep you up to date.

Hi Julia. Danke und viele Grüße zurück. Hoffe dir geht's gut.

Thank you so much Taimur. We're looking forward to sharing the results.

Hi Patrick, really awesome! Thanks a lot. We're really looking forward to hopefully sequence the genome (fingers crossed we make it till next week). And we know it could turn out to be really tricky to find the causative mutation (given that BUB doesn't have any direct relatives). And for that we're looking forward to share the data with all who know how to help. Best -d

Hi. If grumpy and happy cats really falll into distinct categories BUB really should fall in the happy category :). But it would be really interesting to see whether you can find something in connection with calcium uptake/metabolism or anything else that has to do with bone biology.

Hi Richard. I keep my fingers crossed that you meet your goal!

Hi Gerben. Thanks, sometimes I'm still a little bewildered how well so many aspects of this project fit together. The science, LilBUB, and most of all I enjoy the good spirit pretty much everyone spreads (which must be the Magic of BUB)!

Thank you Judy (and Ian in the comment above). We're all very very excited and hope we will be able to share also the road to the results with all of you!

That's right. As a backer we're not only forever grateful to you, but you'll be automatically notified whenever we have something new. But you can follow us as well on twitter or facebook. Why not do all at once ;). Thank you so much for your interest!!