Sea dragons stand out from the crowd.
The fish are adorned with leaves. Their spine is not straight. Their teeth and ribs are missing. The men take on the responsibility of pregnant women.
Researchers at the University of Oregon have found genetic clues to the fish's unique features by analyzing their genomes. The face, teeth, and appendages are helped by those genes.
Sea horses and pipefish are members of the same family. Clay Small is a research assistant professor and member of Bill Cresko's lab. Sea dragons are odd in a group of weird fish.
Susie Bassham was part of the project.
Bassham said there is a lot of interest in how the head and face evolve.
Sea dragons can be a good example of a case study because of their rapid evolution. Sea dragons and sea horses are part of a family that branched off about 50 million years ago.
They report their findings in the journal on June 22.
Sea dragons are only found off the coast of Australia. They are difficult to study. Cresko's lab was given rare access to tissue samples by collaborating with scientists from the Tennessee Aquarium and the Birch Aquarium.
The genomes of two sea dragon species have been mapped. They compared those genes to other fish such as sea horses and pipefish.
Along with pipefish and sea horses, sea dragons were missing part of their genes that guide their development.
Sea dragons had higher amounts of transposons than their relatives. These genes are often copied or moved around in the genome. They can cause rapid genetic changes if they put themselves in the middle of a gene.
A high-resolution 3D image of a weedy sea dragon was captured by the team using a specialized X-ray microscope. They took pictures of the fish in sections and merged them into a picture.
Bassham said that no one had ever imaged any part of a sea dragon like that before.
They could see the fine structure of the sea dragon's bones and learn how some of the fish's unique body structures may have evolved.
Bassham said that the support structures for the leafy paddles looked like they were made of spines. Evidence showed that theornaments are derived from the spine.
The UO scientists hope that making the sea dragons' genome sequence publicly available will help them understand and conserve the rare fish.
More information: Clayton M. Small et al, Leafy and weedy seadragon genomes connect genic and repetitive DNA features to the extravagant biology of syngnathid fishes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2119602119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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