Chris T. Amemiya, Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason and University of Washington, Seattle, WA (camemiya@vmresearch.org)
Eric S. Lander, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Richard M. Myers, Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA
Introduction
The discovery of the living coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae, by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer off the coast of South Africa in 1938 [1], was one of the most important biological discoveries of the twentieth century. L. chalumnae is an extant member of an ancient group of lobe-finned fishes previously known only from fossils and believed to have been extinct since the Late Cretaceous, about 70 million years ago [1,2]. The discovery of a second coelacanth species in Indonesia in 1998, L. menadoensis [3-5], was equally surprising, but for other reasons. Both discoveries were met with fanfare, intrigue, disbelief, skepticism, political shenanigans, and intense scrutiny [2,6,7].
Part of the reason why the discoveries drew such fascination is because Latimeria is a large, prehistoric-looking creature that has changed very little over evolutionary time, and because of the ramifications involving our own evolutionary history, something in which we are inherently interested [7,8]. Appendix 1 lists several salient facts regarding the general biology of coelacanths. We have also written an up-to-date review of all molecular biological studies concerning Latimeria [9]. It is important to note that coelacanths are extremely informative from a phylogenetic standpoint since they represent an ancient lineage (along with the lungfish) that serves as an outgroup to the land vertebrates, and realistically the only such taxon for which a genome sequence can be obtained.
+++++
Full PDF free here/PDF gratuito do artigo aqui.
