Model of a coelacanth in the Houston Museum of Natural ScienceWIKIMEDIA, DADEROT
Species: African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae)
Genome size: ~2.86 billion base pairs
The African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) was thought to have gone extinct around 70 million years ago until a fisherman caught one off the coast of the South Africa in 1938. The fish looked so much like its fossilized ancestors of 300 million years ago that it was labeled a “living fossil.” That’s a controversial term, as looks can be deceiving but parts of the coelacanth’s genome do appear to be changing more slowly than those of other vertebrates.
Having acquired DNA from a rare fresh-caught specimen, an international team of researchers sequenced the whole coelacanth genome, revealing surprisingly little change in the fish’s protein-coding genes, as compared with a chicken and several mammals. The ...
