The tetraodon genome.

Abstract

Tetraodon is a small brackish water tropical fish that is endowed with the smallest known vertebrate genome. This property has been exploited by sequencing, followed by analyses and comparisons to other vertebrate genomes that have yielded unexpected findings. The paucity of repeats, extreme gene density, rapid molecular evolution and chromosome stability are some of the characteristics of the Tetraodon genome. The organization of paralogous and orthologous genes in the genome have been key elements to prove that a whole genome duplication has occurred at the root of the teleost lineage, providing at the same time a much clearer picture of the ancestral teleost genome.