9 Fish Genomics and Biology

Abstract

“There the nets brought up beautiful specimens of fish: Some with azure fins and tails like gold, the flesh of which is unrivalled; some nearly destitute of scales, but of exquisite flavour; others, with bony jaws, and yellow-tinged gills, as good as bonitos; all fish that would be of use to us.” While the gastronomic qualities of fish did not escape Jules Verne in his 1870 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, fish are no less put to good use in twenty-first century biology. In this new context, one could easily replace fin color and flesh quality by genome size and embryo transparency in a similar enumeration of the advantages of these animals for biology in general and molecular genetics in particular. If Captain Nemo was in a position to offer such variety on his menu, it is partly because fish comprise more than 25,000 species, by far the most successful vertebrate group. Indeed few aquatic ecosystems have eluded colonization by at least some fish species, from Tibetan streams to the abyss of the oceans via sub-zero Antarctic seas (Nelson 1994). Of these species, many have long been used as models in different disciplines of biology (Fig. 1) because of this very diversity: The atrophy or exaggeration of important anatomical or physiological functions occur with sufficient frequency to have attracted biologists to fish models (Epstein and Epstein 2005). This includes molecular genetics and genome research, for which fish also possess interesting and outstanding features, if not all-time records, among vertebrates.

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