Antarctic notothenioids fish genomes project

The notothenioids (suborder: Notothenioidei) constitute one of the best characterized marine adaptive radiations. They consist of over 130 species, and are the dominant fish group of the Southern Ocean. The establishment of the group is linked to the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which led to a drop of the water temperature and eradication of other temperate fish faune. Survival of of the notothenioids in sub-zero water temperatures was aided by the appearance of the antifreeze glycoproteins (afgps) which enable freeze avoidance. Additionally, derived species of the Channichthyidae family (icefish) are lacking functional erythrocytes, making them the only vertebrate without blood. They are a remarkable example of adaptive radiation and an emerging model for the study of cold adaptations.

Bista et al. 2022. Fig.1 | The Notothenioidei suborder, all 24 target species, and representative geographic distributions of PacBio sequenced species.

At the Wellcome Sanger Institute we are generating genome assemblies for 24 species across the notothenioid radiation. We are generating PacBio reference assemblies for five species, including the non-Antarctic Cottoperca gobio (synonym Cottoperca trigloides), and four cryonotothenioids; Trematomus bernachii, Harpagifer antarcticus, Gymnodraco acuticeps, and Pseudochaenichtys georgianus. Also, we are also generating draft reference assemblies for 20 more species.

This work is funded by the Wellcome Trust.

News

• Genomics of cold adaptations of the Antarctic notothenioid fish radiation. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.08.494096v1
• Cottoperca gobio reference assembly: The genome sequence of the channel bull blenny, Cottoperca gobio (Günther, 1861). https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-148.
• Towards complete and error-free genome assemblies of all vertebrate species. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03451-0

Data usage:

• These assemblies are provided by the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Cambridge University team of the Sanger Vertebrate Genomes Project
• The data under this project are made available subject to the Wellcome Sanger Institute Data Sharing policy (https://www.sanger.ac.uk/about/research-policies/open-access-science/)