The paper entitled“The Draft Genome of the Grass Carp (Ctenopharyngodonidellus) Provides Insights into Its Evolution and Vegetarian Adaptation”was recently published on Nature Genetics, which was jointly finished by Prof. Liang Xufang’s team from Fisheries College, Institute of Hydrobiology, National Center for Gene Research and Sun Yat-sen University.

Prof. Liang’s team from HZAU’s fisheries college has conducted comparative genetic research and functional genetic research on carnivorous mandarin fish as well as herbivorous grass carp. The study is of great significance to reveal fish’s intake of nutriments and feeding differentiation mechanism from the perspective of molecular nutrition.

In the de novo RNA-seq on the more easily domesticated and less easily domesticated mandarin fish and grass carp before feeding switching and after feeding switching, Dr. He Shan found that the acquisition of food traits, the improvement of eye sight, the reset of the circadian rhythm, the decrease of appetite and the inhibition of memory retention are closely related to the great change of alleles. She also found that there exist a lot of gene expressing differences in the grass carp during the feeding switching process, including cell proliferation and differentiation, appetite control, circadian rhythm, and the digestive and metabolic pathways. The findings have been included in 1 paper onBMC Genomicsand published as co-authored paper onNature Genetics.

It is reported that Dr. He has been in smooth cooperation with the German bass genome research team. And Professor Liang’s mandarin fish genome team has made breakthrough on the research of feeding, growth and evolution mechanism.

(By ZHUANG Jing)