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The whale shark genome reveals how genomic and physiological properties scale with body size

2020; National Academy of Sciences; Volume: 117; Issue: 34 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1073/pnas.1922576117

1091-6490

Jessica A. Weber, Seung Gu Park, Victor Luria, Sungwon Jeon, Hak‐Min Kim, Yeonsu Jeon, Youngjune Bhak, Je Hun Jun, Sang Wha Kim, Won Hee Hong, Semin Lee, Yun Sung Cho, Amir Karger, John W. Cain, Andrea Manica, Soonok Kim, Jae-Hoon Kim, Jeremy S. Edwards, Jong Bhak, George M. Church,

Fish biology, ecology, and behavior

Significance We sequenced and analyzed the genome of the endangered whale shark, the largest fish on Earth, and compared it to the genomes of 84 other species ranging from yeast to humans. We found strong scaling relationships between genomic and physiological features. We posit that these scaling relationships, some of which were remarkably general, mold the genome to integrate metabolic constraints pertaining to body size and ecological variables such as temperature and depth. Unexpectedly, we also found that the size of neural genes is strongly correlated with lifespan in most animals. In the whale shark, large gene size and large neural gene size strongly correlate with lifespan and body mass, suggesting longer gene lengths are linked to longer lifespans.