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The great white shark genome—like the animal itself—is giant, with 41 pairs of chromosomes compared to humans’ 23 pairs, researchers reported yesterday (January 18) in PNAS. The team sequenced the entire genome of the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias), which revealed genetic changes that appear to have helped the species persist for roughly 500 million years longer than almost any vertebrate on Earth.
“Decoding the white shark genome is providing science with a new set of keys to unlock lingering mysteries about these feared and misunderstood predators,” study coauthor Salvador Jorgensen, a senior research scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, says in a statement. The data reveal genetic changes that play a role in DNA repair, damage response, and damage tolerance, and those changes could explain how the sharks grow to be so big yet not have higher incidences of cancer compared with humans.
Theoretically, sharks ...
