**5. Conclusions**

Our understanding of marsupial and monotreme genomes has been greatly advanced due in large part to the availability of BAC libraries for several key species. With the emergence of Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), a transmissible cancer threatening the extinction of this species in the wild within the next 25 years (McCallum et al., 2007), many marsupial researchers are are focusing their efforts on characterization of this devastating disease. BAC libraries are playing a play a major role in this work, building on the strategies developed for other species described here to rapidly gain as much information as possible on the normal and DFTD tumour genomes. In addition, genome sequencing of other marsupial and monotremes species is currently underway using next generation sequencing technology and it is anticipated that BAC libraries will continue to be a very precious resource for comparative genomic studies in these species.
