Image of a great white shark from Wikimedia Commons.
Dr. Michael Stanhope from Cornell University has discovered that great white sharks actually share more proteins involved in metabolism and biochemistry in common with humans than zebrafish, a common fish model used in biomedical research. They made this discovery by sequencing the transcriptome of a heart isolated from a great white shark. I find it fascinating that sharks have more proteins in common with mammals than with bony fish, even though sharks and bony fish are not very closely related.
Source:
Cornell University Press
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Alright all you evolutionary biologists, I expect to see you all replace your zebrafish tanks for shark tanks!
someone is gonna use this to try to discredit evolution again
anyway, just heart transcriptome? what if it was different in other organs? we need more sharks to sample