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FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS

Decoding the zebrafish genome

Nature Genetics volume 54, pages 917–919 (2022)Cite this article

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A large-scale collaborative effort now provides a comprehensive annotation of functional non-coding elements in the zebrafish genome. This work serves as an essential foundation for future studies to understand how gene regulatory circuits control embryonic development.

Twenty years ago, the Human Genome Project revealed that understanding how a genome shapes an organism could not be gleaned from sequence alone1,2. Aside from coding sequence, nearly 99% of the human genome at that time lacked a functional role, inspiring a large-scale collaborative effort, known as the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project3, to better characterize non-coding sequence. A decade later, ENCODE provided integrated analyses of chromatin modifications and accessibility, along with gene expression data, across multiple tissues and cell types to derive a comprehensive annotation of cis-regulatory elements in the human genome4. Recently completing its third phase, ENCODE has cataloged nearly one million cis-regulatory elements in the human genome, including those involved in both transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation, along with comparative datasets for the mouse genome5. As ENCODE continues into its fourth phase, large-scale genetic perturbation studies and reporter assays will help to provide functional validation of predictions made from earlier stages of the project.

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Fig. 1: Multiomic profiling of zebrafish embryos.

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  1. Department of Molecular, Cell, and Cancer Biology, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA

    Nathan D. Lawson

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  1. Nathan D. Lawson
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Correspondence to Nathan D. Lawson.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Lawson, N.D. Decoding the zebrafish genome. Nat Genet 54, 917–919 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-022-01080-5

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