Genomic Access to the Diversity of Fishes

The number of fishes exceeds that of all other vertebrates both in terms of species numbers and in their morphological and phylogenetic diversity. They are an ecologically and economically important group and play an essential role as a resource for humans. This makes the genomic exploration of fishes an important area of research, both from an applied and a basic research perspective. Fish genomes can vary greatly in complexity, which is partially due to differences in size and content of repetitive DNA, a history of genome duplication events and because fishes may be polyploid, all of which complicate the assembly and analysis of genome sequences. However, the advent of modern sequencing techniques now facilitates access to genomic data that permit genome-wide exploration of genetic information even for previously unexplored species. The development of genomic resources for fishes is spearheaded by model organisms that have been subject to genetic analysis and genome sequencing projects for a long time. These offer a great potential for the exploration of new species through the transfer of genomic information in comparative analyses. A growing number of genome sequencing projects and the increasing availability of tools to assemble and access genomic information now move boundaries between model and nonmodel species and promises progress in many interesting but unexplored species that remain to be studied.