Fish genomes flying. Symposium on Medaka Genomics.

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More than 50 researchers from all over the world gathered at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany, to participate in the first meeting of the Medaka Genome Initiative. The symposium was held from 31 July to 1 August 2002. ![][1] Fish models have become very popular during the past decade (see Fig. 1 for phylogenetic relationships). Recently established models for genomic studies (the Japanese and freshwater pufferfish, Fugu rubripes and Tetraodon nigroviridis , respectively) and for developmental biology (the zebrafish, Danio rerio ) are now the focus of interest of many biologists, although ‘old’ models are still useful for the study of tumorigenesis (platyfish, Xiphophorus ) and evolution, radiation and speciation (African cichlids), as well as for the evolution of sex determination and developmental genetics (the medaka, Oryzias latipes ). Although the zebrafish and its features as an experimental system are well known among scientists within and outside the field, knowledge of the medaka has so far been restricted (with a few exceptions) to its home range, Japan, and some other countries in the Far East. Figure 1. Evolutionary relationships in various organisms that are used as model systems to study processes such as development, disease, sex determination, tumorigenesis and evolution. The fish shown is an adult medaka male. In Japan, the breeding of medaka colour variants for ornamental purposes is a tradition that goes back several centuries. In the early twentieth century, the medaka was recruited as a model species for biological and genetic research. In fact, it was the study of the inheritance of body colour in the medaka by Toyama in 1916 that proved that Mendelian laws also apply to fish (Toyama, 1916). Another milestone achievement was the discovery of Y‐chromosome‐linked inheritance by Aida in 1921 (Aida, 1921). Within the past seven years, the number of publications on studies that involve the medaka have doubled … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif