Who is the “closest aquatic parent to being h …

An international team of scientists, in which the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC) participates, has produced Australian lungfish genome sequencing, which could help clarify how the Earth’s environment was conquered.

It is “aquatic closest to humans”said one of the researchers in the study published Wednesday by the journal Nature.

The Queensland Lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri), considered a “living fossil”, exhibits several characteristics that reveal its evolutionary proximity to terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods: a group that includes amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals). Among them, detailed Iker Irisarri, postdoctoral researcher at MNCN and at the University of Göttingen (Germany), are the presence of “Lungs and fleshy fins”.

Therefore, explained the specialist, the analysis of the genome of this fish could help clarify the process of conquering the continent, which was made possible by various adaptations of “breathing, smelling, movement and reproduction”.

Among the results of the study, Irisarri also highlights the characterization of developmental genes which “reveal similar evolutionary processes in human respiratory organs and in fish-lung organs”, indicating a common evolutionary origin.

Finally, this research also makes it possible to demonstrate that during the transition between the aquatic and terrestrial environment, the species has developed “a greater number of genes involved in smell and fewer receptors for odors transmitted by water” .

Due to the complexity of sequencing “one of the largest genomes in the animal kingdom – its chromosomes are as large as a human’s entire genome” – the study had the collaboration of different scientific institutions.