Spot the Similarities

Along with fruit flies, nematode worms and mice, zebrafish are widely-used as model organisms to help scientists understand developmental processes and diseases. Yet hundreds of millions of years of evolution, including duplication of their entire genome, have made teleost fish like zebrafish very genetically distant from humans. The recently-sequenced genome of the spotted gar (pictured), a more slowly-evolving fish, provides a solution to this problem, conveniently bridging the gap between us and teleosts. Gar possess genes found in both humans and zebrafish, as well as important segments of non-coding DNA, known to be associated with diseases in man, but difficult to pinpoint in the zebrafish genome. As well as shedding more light on the evolution of shared structures such as limbs and enamel, information from the gar’s genome should provide useful tools for biomedical research, helping scientists to accurately locate and study interesting regions of DNA in zebrafish.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

Emmanuelle Briolat

Writer

A researcher specialising in visual signals in Lepidoptera, camouflage and the effects of light pollution, Emmanuelle’s writing covers a range of topics, from biomedical research to children’s books about moth defences.

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• Image by Solomon David
• University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
• Image copyright held by the photographer
• Research published in Nature Genetics, March 2016