Presented by Ingo Braash, Assistant Professor,
Michigan State University
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The bowfin (Amia calva) is a ray-finned fish that possesses a unique suite of ancestral and derived phenotypes which are key to understanding vertebrate evolution and development. The phylogenetic position of bowfin as a representative of neopterygian fishes, its archetypical body plan and its “unduplicated” and slowly evolving genome make bowfin a central species for the genomic exploration of ray-finned fishes. We have generated a chromosome-level genome assembly for bowfin that enables gene-order analyses, settling long-debated phylogenetic relationships among major ray-finned fish lineages. Utilizing the bowfin reference genome, we have used ATAC-Seq and RNA-Seq to examine chromatin accessibility and gene expression through bowfin development to investigate the evolution of immune, scale, respiratory, and fin skeletal systems. We identified thousands of gene-regulatory loci conserved across vertebrates, connecting the vertebrate regulatome from fish to human. These resources connect developmental evolution among bony fishes, further highlighting the bowfin’s importance for illuminating vertebrate biology and diversity in the genomic era.