ABOVE: A colorful mandarinfish perches on a piece of coral.
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If any fish deserves the name spendidus, it is the mandarinfish. Its magnificent colors have made this fish popular in the aquarium industry despite the fact that it’s covered in poison, has notoriously picky eating habits, and smells terrible. The secrets of how it produces its vibrant hues and foul mucus have remained shrouded in mystery, but may soon be revealed thanks to a genome sequence for the species published this month (October 18) in G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics. The assembly will also put the animal in prime position to aid in learning more about the strange and varied order to which it belongs.
University of Oregon researchers Martin Stervander and William Cresko built the genome using linked-read sequencing, a process which generates synthetic long reads from much shorter ones. Long DNA molecules are extracted from cells but then broken ...
