Abstract
A genomic analysis of the annual fish Nothobranchius furzeri, a vertebrate with the shortest known life span in captivity and which may provide a new model organism for aging research.
Highlights
The annual fish Nothobranchius furzeri is the vertebrate with the shortest known life span in captivity
In contrast to the Gona Re Zhou (GRZ) strain established from the game reserve in Zimbabwe, recently established isolates of N. furzeri populations from southern Mozambique differ in life span and time of expression of age-related traits, which presumably reflects adaptation to the seasonal duration of their respective ponds [18]
Using RepeatMasker and Repbase Update, the reference library of vertebrate repeats [47], we found that 7-9% of the N. furzeri 5.4 Mb samples is composed of known interspersed repeats (Table 2)
Summary
To contribute to establishing N. furzeri as a new model organism, we provide a first insight into its genome and a comparison to medaka, stickleback, tetraodon and zebrafish. The N. furzeri genome contains 19 chromosomes (2n = 38). Its genome of between 1.6 and 1.9 Gb is the largest among the analyzed fish species and has, at 45%, the highest repeat content. Tandem repeats comprise 21%, which is 4-12 times more than in the other four fish species. G+C-rich tandem repeats preferentially localize to centromeric regions. Phylogenetic analysis based on coding sequences identifies medaka as the closest relative. Genotyping of an initial set of 27 markers and multi-locus fingerprinting of one microsatellite provides the first molecular evidence that the GRZ strain is highly inbred
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