| Comment: | The Japanese pufferfish Fugu rubripes has the shortest known genome of any vertebrate species. As vertebrates, fish and humans share not only the defining characteristic of a backbone, but also many basic anatomical and physiological similarities. The compact Fugu genome contains the same basic vertebrate blueprint as the human genome in a sequence seven times shorter. This difference is primarily due to the scarcity in Fugu of the large repeat-filled tracts that litter the human genome. |
