Balloon fish, based

2001/12/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Genetika

Puffinfish is a highly appreciated food in Japan. However, it is so well known among us for its lethal potential. From now on, however, something else you will know is the fact of being the second vertebrate that is sequenced almost completely (the other is the human being himself).

Ten years ago they decided to sequence the balloon fish genome. The reason for this was very simple: it is the one with the smallest genome among vertebrates. This fish has a genome of about 300 million base pairs that have already been sequenced in their entirety. The outcome of this work was presented at the International Meeting on Genome Sequencing and Analysis. However, having sequenced the genome in parts, they will now have to decide the order of all of them. This can work for a few years.