Jim Mason

Animal Molecular Breeding, Animalsci Publisher, Richmond, BC, V7A4Z5, Canada
Author    Correspondence author
Animal Molecular Breeding, 2024, Vol. 14, No. 1   doi: 10.5376/amb.2024.14.0010
Received: 24 Jan., 2024    Accepted: 15 Feb., 2024    Published: 24 Feb., 2024

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Mason J., 2024, Genome duplication and gene loss in eels: unraveling the mysteries of vertebrate genome dynamics, Animal Molecular Breeding, 14(1): 82-85 (doi: 10.5376/amb.2024.14.0010)

The paper "The hagfish genome and the evolution of vertebrates" authored by Ferdinand Marlétaz, Jeramiah J. Smith, Daniel S. Rokhsar, and others was published in Nature on January 23, 2024. The authors are affiliated with the Department of Genetics at University College London, the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Tokyo, among others. In this study, the research team explored the genome of the jawless vertebrate, the hagfish, revealing the complex history of early vertebrate evolution and the functional role of whole genome duplication. By analyzing the chromosome-level genome sequence of the brown hagfish (Eptatretus atami), the study presents an overview of vertebrate genome evolution, including autotetraploidization that occurred in the early Cambrian period followed by subsequent whole-genome polyploidization events. Additionally, the study discovered gene-programmed deletion phenomena occurring during the early developmental stages of hagfish. These findings provide a framework for further research into the evolution of jawless and jawed vertebrates.

Genome duplication; Gene loss; Eels