Evolution and genetic adaptation of fishes to the deep sea

The deep sea, especially hadal zones, characterized by high-hydrostatic pressure, low temperatures, and near-total darkness, present some of the most challenging environments for life on Earth. However, teleost fish have successfully colonized these extreme habitats through complex adaptations. We generated genome assemblies of 12 species, including 11 deep-sea fishes. Our findings reconstructed the teleost deep-sea colonization history and revealed the overall impact of the deep-sea environment on fishes. Interestingly, our results question the previously assumed linear correlation between trimethylamine oxide (TMAO) content and depth. By contrast, we observed a convergent aa replacement in the rtf1 gene in most deep-sea fishes under 3,000 m, and in vitro experiments suggest that this mutation can influence transcriptional efficiency, which is likely to be advantageous in the deep-sea environment. Moreover, our study underlines the pervasive impact of human activities, as we detected the presence of persistent organic pollutants in species from the Mariana Trench.

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Publication Details

Journal
Cell
Published
2025-03-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.01.002
Citations
18
Primary Topic
Genetic diversity and population structure
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
32.71
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article

Evolution and genetic adaptation of fishes to the deep sea

Shanya Cai, Wenyu Fang, Chenglong Zhu, Honghui Zeng et al.
18 citations
Cell
Genetic diversity and population structure
32.71
article

Evolution and genetic adaptation of fishes to the deep sea

Shanya Cai, Wenyu Fang, Chenglong Zhu, Honghui Zeng, Jing Bo, Guangyi Fan, Wenqi Lv, Yue Song, Taoshu Wei, Helu Liu, Haibin Zhang, Kun Wang, Cheng Wang, Hao Liu, Jiwei Li, Xiaoni Gan, Wenjie Xu, Shunping He, Han Xu, Yi‐Yu Chen, Zhongli Sha, Lisheng He, Chengchi Fang, Hongmei Jing
article en
18 citations

Abstract

The deep sea, especially hadal zones, characterized by high-hydrostatic pressure, low temperatures, and near-total darkness, present some of the most challenging environments for life on Earth. However, teleost fish have successfully colonized these extreme habitats through complex adaptations. We generated genome assemblies of 12 species, including 11 deep-sea fishes. Our findings reconstructed the teleost deep-sea colonization history and revealed the overall impact of the deep-sea environment on fishes. Interestingly, our results question the previously assumed linear correlation between trimethylamine oxide (TMAO) content and depth. By contrast, we observed a convergent aa replacement in the rtf1 gene in most deep-sea fishes under 3,000 m, and in vitro experiments suggest that this mutation can influence transcriptional efficiency, which is likely to be advantageous in the deep-sea environment. Moreover, our study underlines the pervasive impact of human activities, as we detected the presence of persistent organic pollutants in species from the Mariana Trench.

CellVol. 188(5)
National Natural Science Foundation of China (CN), Northwestern Polytechnical University (CN), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Institute of Hydrobiology (CN), Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering (CN), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Laoshan Laboratory
Life below water
Openalex Percentile: Top 0%
Genetic diversity and population structure
32.71
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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