This thesis spans several years of work dedicated to understanding fish genomes. In the first chapter it describes the genome of the first fish for which the entire genome was sequenced through a... Show moreThis thesis spans several years of work dedicated to understanding fish genomes. In the first chapter it describes the genome of the first fish for which the entire genome was sequenced through a large-scale international project, Fugu rubripes. the pufferfish. In particular, it highlights how this fish has a genome that contains as many genes as the human genome, although it is ten times smaller. It also shows that the majority of genes that are found in the human genome can be found in this fish genome as well. In the second chapter we compared fish genomes to the human genome to find regions that have been preserved during evolution and which are therefore likely to have a function, even though they are not genes. We showed that indeed they are functional, and they help to regulate other genes. Knowing all the genes in the genome we could then interrogate how they are expressed, i.e. if they are switched __on__ or __off__ and in particular in chapter 4 we looked at how a specific gene is in charge of gradually switching off genes that are inherited from the mother in a newborn fish embryo. Finally in the last chapter since genome sequencing is now becoming much cheaper and simpler to achieve we set out to map the genome of the common carp and we discuss the best approaches and strategies to obtain a good genome sequence for this species. The common carp is a candidate model system for high-troughput screening. Show less
