380 million years ago, fish started to crawl out of the water to colonise land. The Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri) – an endangered, air-breathing fish – is one of the few living relatives of these first land explorers.

An international team of researchers including IMP senior scientist Elly Tanaka sequenced its giant genome for the first time, unveiling the species’ unique evolutionary history and striking similarities to land-dwelling vertebrates. The study, published in the journal "Nature" in January 2021, sets a record for the largest animal genome ever sequenced.

In this video, IMP scientists Elly Tanaka and Siegfried Schloissnig explain how they used their experience from unciphering the genome of the Mexican salamander axolotl two years ago, scaled up their genomics toolkit - and set a new mark for huge genome sizes.

Original publication
Axel Meyer, Siegfried Schloissnig, Paolo Franchini, Kang Du, Joost Woltering, Iker Irisarri, Wai Yee Wong, Sergej Nowoshilow, Susanne Kneitz, Akane Kawaguchi, Andrej Fabrizius, Peiwen Xiong, Corentin Dechaud, Herman Spaink, Jean-Nicolas Volff, Oleg Simakov, Thorsten Burmester, Elly Tanaka, Manfred Schartl: “Giant Lungfish genome elucidates the conquest of land by vertebrates”. Nature, 18 January 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03198-8

The lungfish shown in the video live at the Haus des Meeres aquazoo in Vienna, Austria.