Clarifying the evolutionary process of aquatic animals onto land

American biologists said on April 17 that they had successfully decoded the DNA of an ancient coelacanth through its living fossil, providing further clues to explain the changes in habitats of some aquatic animals that moved onto land millions of years ago.

The results of this special research were published in the prestigious British magazine Nature.

By analyzing the coelacanth's genome, scientists found 3 million letters of DNA code, the same size as the human genome.

Coelacanth. (Source: biolib.cz)

Scientist Jessica Alfoeldi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, USA, said that the genes of this fish species generally evolve much slower than all other fish species and terrestrial vertebrates.

New research on the coelacanth's genome shows it is more closely related to tetrapods than the freshwater lungfish previously discovered in Australia and Africa.

The new findings also confirm that the coelacanth is a unique source for studying the evolution of aquatic animals moving onto land. Their genes could help explain changes, including how the land-dwelling fish developed a sense of smell to detect air and food, and how their immune systems changed to respond to bacteria and viruses in their new environment.

The coelacanth was once thought to have become extinct around 65 million years ago, at the same time as the dinosaurs. However, this theory was disproved when a coelacanth was found in South Africa in 1938. Since then, 308 other coelacanths have been discovered.

According to scientists, this decoding of the coelacanth's genes has brought about surprising discoveries for the scientific community over the past millennium, helping to shed more light on research on aquatic animals on land./.

According to (TTXVN) - VT