http://en.people.cn/n3/2024/1227/c90000-20259070.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-024-04223-x
A research team led by Professor Lu Jianguo from the School of Marine Sciences at Sun Yat-sen University and researchers of the agricultural science institute of Jiujiang City, east China’s Jiangxi Province have assembled the genome of Ochetobius elongatus, once an important freshwater economic fish in China and widely distributed in the Yangtze River Basin. The fish has a small and slender body, with a maximum length of 55 centimeters and a weight of 500 to 1,000 grams. As a migratory fish, it reproduces from April to June each year. After hatching, the young fish leave the rivers and migrate to lakes for feeding and overwintering. It takes three to five years for them to reach sexual maturity.
The fish has experienced a sharp decline in population over the past three decades due to environmental degradation and human activities. The species was listed as “critically endangered” in China’s Red List of Biodiversity in 2023. Following the implementation of the 10-year fishing ban in the Yangtze River at the beginning of 2020, an improvement has been seen in the fishery resources of the river.
Despite the application of conservation genetics and genomics in the protection of several endangered species within the Yangtze River Basin, such as the Yangtze finless porpoise, Gobiocypris rarus (a freshwater species of cyprinid fish endemic to China), and Leptobotia elongata (a species of botiid fish) — all of which have had their genomes sequenced and assembled, the critically endangered Ochetobius elongatus had yet to have its genome assembled until this time.
The researchers assembled the chromosomal-level genome of the Ochetobius elongatus based on various sequencing technologies. A total of 28,674 protein-coding genes were predicted, with 28,637 genes (99.87 percent) annotated, indicating the high quality of the genome assembly. In the future, Lu’s team plans to focus on research on artificial breeding and aquaculture techniques for the rare fish, aiming to achieve sustainable artificial breeding of the species.
