Freshwater angelfish genome sequenced for the first time in US

Washington: A high school student in the US is the first ever to sequence the genome of the freshwater angelfish, Pterophyllum scalare.

Whole genome sequencing (WGS), also known as full or complete or entire genome sequencing, is the process of determining the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a single time.

According to Indeever's paper, published in the journal microPublication Biology, the final genome assembly of freshwater angelfish consisted of 15,486 contigs and was 734.29 MB in size. Contigs are is a set of overlapping DNA segments that together represent a consensus region of DNA. Consensus regions or sequences serve as a simplified representation of the population.

According to the research paper, angelfish tissue was obtained from an angelfish raised by Indeever from birth. The angelfish used in this work, said Indeever in his paper, died of natural causes prior to the start of experimentation and was neither euthanised nor harmed in any way for the purpose of this research.

In his work, Indeever sequenced, assembled, and annotated the complete genome of the freshwater angelfish in addition to the full mitochondrial genome with Oxford Nanopore Technologies. His final work has been given a BUSCO score of 86.5 per cent, which signifies "completeness assessment".

12.47 per cent of the genome were masked, containing simple repeat sequences.

Funding, Indeever said in his paper, was raised through experiment.com.

The freshwater angelfish is a popular freshwater cichlid kept by aquarium hobbyists around the world, the paper said.

Further, according to the paper, although the behaviours of the angelfish have been well studied, very little is known about the nuclear genetics of the angelfish as its genome has never been fully sequenced and assembled. Cichlids are of especial importance to biomedical research, for they have been used as model organisms to study craniofacial variation and neurobiology.

Investigating the genome of the angelfish may enable its use as a model organism for further biological research, the paper said.