State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430072, China; BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518083, China.
School of Ecology and Environment, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China.
State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430072, China.
BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518083, China.
Key Laboratory of Freshwater Biodiversity Conservation, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Yangtze River Fisheries Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Wuhan, China.
Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution and State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 142 Xi-zhi-men-wai Street, Beijing 100044, China; CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Beijing 100044, China.
Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianjin, China.
BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518083, China; James D. Watson Institute of Genome Sciences, Hangzhou, China; Guangdong Provincial Academician Workstation of BGI Synthetic Genomics, BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518120, China.
Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution and State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; Center for Excellence in Animal Evolution and Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 32 Jiaochang Donglu, Kunming 650223, China.
School of Ecology and Environment, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China; Center for Excellence in Animal Evolution and Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 32 Jiaochang Donglu, Kunming 650223, China; State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China. Electronic address: wwang@mail.kiz.ac.cn.
Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 142 Xi-zhi-men-wai Street, Beijing 100044, China; CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Beijing 100044, China; College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. Electronic address: zhumin@ivpp.ac.cn.
State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430072, China; Center for Excellence in Animal Evolution and Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 32 Jiaochang Donglu, Kunming 650223, China; Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sanya 572000, China. Electronic address: clad@ihb.ac.cn.
BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518083, China; Center for Excellence in Animal Evolution and Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 32 Jiaochang Donglu, Kunming 650223, China; State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China; Villum Center for Biodiversity Genomics, Section for Ecology and Evolution, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Electronic address: guojie.zhang@bio.ku.dk.
Rich fossil evidence suggests that many traits and functions related to terrestrial evolution were present long before the ancestor of lobe- and ray-finned fishes. Here, we present genome sequences of the bichir, paddlefish, bowfin, and alligator gar, covering all major early divergent lineages of ray-finned fishes. Our analyses show that these species exhibit many mosaic genomic features of lobe- and ray-finned fishes. In particular, many regulatory elements for limb development are present in these fishes, supporting the hypothesis that the relevant ancestral regulation networks emerged before the origin of tetrapods. Transcriptome analyses confirm the homology between the lung and swim bladder and reveal the presence of functional lung-related genes in early ray-finned fishes. Furthermore, we functionally validate the essential role of a jawed vertebrate highly conserved element for cardiovascular development. Our results imply the ancestors of jawed vertebrates already had the potential gene networks for cardio-respiratory systems supporting air breathing.
