Fish out of water: The genetics of evolving onto land

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-01-21 03:00

Australia; International

Tannin, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=179605

The transition of creatures from sea to land life is still poorly understood, so European researchers sequenced the genome of a "living fossil", the Australian lungfish. to learn more about this important evolutionary step. They found genetic changes associated with the development of fins into feet and increases in the number of genes associated with terrestrial functions like walking. The lungfish also has an increased number of genes related to breathing and smelling air, compared to other fish.

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Organisation/s: University of Konstanz, Germany

Funder: This work was supported by the German Science Foundation (DFG) through a grant to AM, TB and MS (Me1725/24-1, Bu956/23-1, Scha408/16-1), to JMW (Wo2165/2-1) and core funding from the IMP to EMT. JNV and MS were supported by a joint grant of the French Research Agency (ANR Evobooster) and DFG (SCHA408/13-1). II was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) (Juan de la Cierva-Incorporacioń fellowship IJCI-2016- 29566) and the European Research Council (Grant Agreement No. 852725; ERC-StG ‘TerreStriAL’ to Jan de Vries, University of Goettingen). WYW and OS were supported by the Austrian Science Fund grants P3219 and I 4353. WYW is supported by Croucher Scholarships for Doctoral Study. AK was supported by a fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellowship for Overseas Researchers Program.

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