Roadmap of animal biodiversity: largest-ever comparison of chromosome-scale genomes

Comparison of 4,454 animal species reveals how chromosomes travelled on "evolutionary Highways" over past 600 million years | A human, an octopus, and a coral could hardly look more different — yet deep inside their cells, their chromosomes still carry recognizable pieces of a genome inherited from an animal ancestor that lived more than 600 million years ago. A study published today in Science Advances by researchers at the University of Vienna maps how those pieces have been reshuffled across the world of animals and reveals that animal genomes evolve along a limited set of irreversible "evolutionary highways". The latest findings provide an important basis for the conservation of animal biodiversity.

Figure of 5,821 chromosome-scale animal genomes

All living animals share a common ancestor from over 600 million years ago. Since then, their chromosomes have fused, split, and rearranged countless times. Today thousands of animal genomes have been sequenced. For the first time in this study an international team led by scientists from the University of Vienna set about comparing them all at once. So far it has been a major challenge to make sense of how their genomes changed over such vast timescales. "Understanding these rules of evolution doesn't just tell us about the past," said Oleg Simakov, a professor at the University of Vienna who co-led the study. "It also lets us ask where genome evolution might go next and enables us to identify key measures for the conservation of animal biodiversity."

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