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Great white shark genome decoded (earthsky.org)
By Eleanor Imster in Earth | March 3, 2019
It’ll help unlock mysteries about these iconic apex predators – explaining their “superpowers” like wound-healing and long lifespans – and why they’ve thrived more than 400 million years.
In a major step toward understand the biology of the great white shark, its entire genome has now been decoded in detail.
The iconic predator – whose ancestry dates back more than 400 million years – is famous not just for its massive size (up to 20 feet or 6.1 meters) and fierceness, but also for its wound-healing abilities, long lifespan (70-odd years), and low rates of cancer.
The new study, published February 19, 2019, in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compared the great white’s genome to genomes from a variety of other vertebrates, including the giant whale shark and humans. It turns out that the great white’s genome is massive – they have 41 pairs of chromosomes compared to our 23 — and the researchers say that decoding their genome could help reveal the genetic changes behind the shark’s evolutionary success.
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more: https://earthsky.org/earth/great-white-shark-genome-decoded