-COELACANTH! Great article on a recently published study on the coelacanth! The genome of this “living fossil” was recently sequenced and analyzed to investigate questions about the vertebrate water-land transition (adaptations from water-to-land) and comparative rates of genome evolution. The coelacanth was shown to have extremely slow rates of change in its genome, and comparative analysis of the lungfish showed that the lungfish is the closest ancestor of the tetrapods.–

LINKS:

PhysOrg Summary
http://phys.org/news/2013-04-coelacanth-genome-surfaces-unexpected-insights.html
Full journal article from Nature

Click to access nature12027.pdf