Clownfish: complete genome decrypted

September 19, 2018 The genome of the reef fish is available online

An international research team has mapped the genome of the real clown fish (Amphiprion percula), providing the research community with an invaluable resource to decode the response of fish to environmental change, including climate change

In a groundbreaking study led by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE), researchers used high-tech sequencing tools to sequence the genome of the clown fish. The data is available online through the Nemo Genome DB database ( http://nemogenome.org).

"This genome provides an essential foundation for understanding all aspects of reef fish biology, with 26,597 protein-coding genes," Dr. Robert Lehmann from KAUST in Saudi Arabia, lead author of the new study, recently published in the journal Molecular Ecology Resources.

The clown fish is not only the best-known reef fish in the world, but also one of the best-studied. "This species has been central to the groundbreaking research into the ecological and evolutionary aspects of reef fish, for example, the clown fish is a model for studying sex change in fish, and has also helped us understand the patterns of larval dispersal in reef fish, and It is the first species of fish to show that predator behaviour can be affected by acidification of the oceans," said Professor Philip Munday, co-author of Coral CoE.

Link to the study: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/../1755-0998.12939.