Journal
NATURE
Volume 505, Issue 7482, Pages 174-179Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nature12826
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Funding
- National Human Genome Research Institute, USA
- Biomedical Research Council of A*STAR, Singapore
- A*STAR Computational Resource Centre
- Max Planck Society
- NIH [RR006603, AI27877]
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan
- Human Frontiers Science Program Organization
- ERC [260372]
- MICINN (Spain) [BFU2011-28549]
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [24111001] Funding Source: KAKEN
- ICREA Funding Source: Custom
- European Research Council (ERC) [260372] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
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The emergence of jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes) fromjawless vertebrates was accompanied by major morphological and physiological innovations, such as hinged jaws, paired fins and immunoglobulin-based adaptive immunity. Gnathostomes subsequently diverged into two groups, the cartilaginous fishes and the bony vertebrates. Here we report the whole-genome analysis of a cartilaginous fish, the elephant shark (Callorhinchus milii). We find that the C. milii genome is the slowest evolving of all known vertebrates, including the ` living fossil' coelacanth, and features extensive synteny conservation with tetrapod genomes, making it a goodmodel for comparative analyses of gnathostome genomes. Our functional studies suggest that the lack of genes encoding secreted calcium-binding phosphoproteins in cartilaginous fishes explains the absence of bone in their endoskeleton. Furthermore, the adaptive immune system of cartilaginous fishes is unusual: it lacks the canonical CD4 co-receptor and most transcription factors, cytokines and cytokine receptors related to the CD4 lineage, despite the presence of polymorphic major histocompatibility complex class II molecules. It thus presents a new model for understanding the origin of adaptive immunity.
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