The mystery of a fish that walks on two "legs" has been solved!

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology said on the 15th that the Institute of Brain Science, Seoul National University and New York University School of Medicine jointly constructed a high-quality whole genome of the "little ray", and used the genome for comparative genome analysis
.

□Although the small ray is a fish, it is famous for walking in its fins like a leg, similar to terrestrial vertebrates
.
This small ray is thought to have diverged from the common ancestor of terrestrial tetrapods about 470 million years ago
.
Previous studies have reported that Xiaoice shoes are similar to the motor neural networks involved in quadruped walking, but because there is no high-quality Xiaoice shoe whole genome, it is difficult to study the molecular mechanisms
of how these motor neural networks evolve.

□ our research team used the latest genomic analysis technology to construct a high-quality whole genome of small rays
.
The newly constructed baby ray had a genome-wide size of 2.
13 GB, which is 93% of the predicted genome size, and is a high-quality whole genome
containing 17,230 coding proteins.

□ in addition, the team conducted a comparative analysis
with land animals.
Using the high-quality whole genome of small rays, the transcriptomes of motor neurons of small rays and quadrupeds were compared for
analysis.
On this basis, co-expressed genes and differentially expressed genes
were found in motor neurons.

□ small rays have 10 muscles when walking with fins, while quadrupeds use 50 muscles to move their limbs
.
By comparing the two species, the team proposed the molecular mechanisms
of how terrestrial tetrapods evolved to develop simple walking patterns and complex locomotion.

□The study was led by Baek Myung-In, a professor in the Department of Brain Science at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, and conducted
in conjunction with research teams at Seoul National University and New York University School of Medicine.
Its significance lies in the fact that it brings together specialized research capabilities in the fields of comparative biology, genomics, and neurobiology to demonstrate the molecular mechanisms
underlying the evolution of locomotor neural networks associated with walking.

Baek Myung-in, a professor in the Department of Brain Science at □, said: "Walking has both simple and complex forms, which is a groundbreaking discovery that shows the molecular mechanisms of how these forms arise over the long evolutionary process
.
"