Rainbow Trout Genome Sequenced By International Team Of Researchers

April 22, 2014

By Eric Sorensen, Washington State University

Using fish bred at Washington State University, an international team of researchers has mapped the genetic profile of the rainbow trout, a versatile salmonid whose relatively recent genetic history opens a window into how vertebrates evolve.

The 30-person team, led by Yann Guiguen of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, reports its findings this week in Nature Communications.

Recent doubling enables study

The investigators focused on the rate at which genes have evolved since a rare genome doubling event occurred in the rainbow trout approximately 100 million years ago. Unlike most evolutionary processes involving mutations and the selection of advantageous traits, a doubling event acts like the copied draft of a piece of writing that can be edited and recast without the risk of destroying the earlier version.

Ordinarily, the consequences of such doubling events are lost to science as they get cast out by selective forces in subsequent generations. But because 100 million years is a relatively short time, evolutionarily speaking, the trout researchers could in effect glimpse the fishs evolutionary editing process.

In humans and most vertebrates the duplication events were older so there are fewer duplicated genes still present, said Gary Thorgaard, a co-author and WSU biologist with four decades of experience peering into the trouts genes. Most of the duplicated genes get lost or modified so much that they are no longer recognizable as duplicates over time. In the trout and salmon we can see an earlier stage in the process and many duplicated genes are still present.

A versatile fish

The rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss, is one of lifes great success stories. It has straddled the worlds of nature and nurture, naturally thriving in a range of temperatures and water quality while responding to domestication so well that it has been spread by human hand from the Pacific Rim to thrive in waters on six continents.

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Rainbow Trout Genome Sequenced By International Team Of Researchers