printable versionStickleback swims into sequence
The NoahÂ’s ark of animals waiting in the sequencing line behind humans, mice and rats has a new arrival.
A small but influential fish called the threespine stickleback now joins cows, chickens, chimpanzees and honeybees on the National Institutes of Health list of species to be sequenced.
Though not a household name, the stickleback has already helped researchers understand how species evolve new traits, according to David Kingsley, PhD, professor of developmental biology, who first proposed sequencing the fish to the National Institutes of Health in 2003.
The threespine stickleback recently evolved into pockets of distinctly different sub-populations.
This recent evolution makes the stickleback an ideal model for studying how complex traits evolve in natural populations.
“The genome sequence of sticklebacks will make it possible to go from traits to genes much more quickly,” he said.
Sequencing will begin later this year at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass.