Quoted in WSJ

I was quoted in the Wall Street Journal today:

A yellow banana slug. PHOTO: ALICE CAHILL/GETTY IMAGES (Image copied from WSJ article.)

Sammy the Slug, the mascot of the University of California, Santa Cruz, is a slimy yellow mollusk without a shell.“The banana slug is not a model organism or an agricultural parasite so there is not much economic interest in studying it,” said bioengineering professor Kevin Karplus, who has been involved in the project since its inception.

The tooth-tongued hermaphrodite—a “lowly creature” according to the university’s own website—is beloved on campus. A crowdfunding campaign in late 2014 to raise money to decode the slug drew about $21,500, surpassing the $20,000 goal.

Source: Does Your Mascot Have a DNA Sequence? School Boosters Compete With Science – WSJ