Goldfish Morphology As a Model for Evolutionary Developmental Biology
Overview Goldfish morphology as a model for evolutionary developmental biology Kinya G. Ota* and Gembu Abe Morphological variation of the goldfish is known to have been established by artificial selection for ornamental purposes during the domestication process. Chinese texts that date to the Song dynasty contain descriptions of goldfish breeding for ornamental purposes, indicating that the practice originated over one thousand years ago. Such a well-documented goldfish breeding process, combined with the phylogenetic and embryological proximities of this species with zebrafish, would appear to make the morphologically diverse goldfish strains suitable models for evolutionary developmental (evodevo) studies. How- ever, few modern evodevo studies of goldfish have been conducted. In this review, we provide an overview of the historical background of goldfish breed- ing, and the differences between this teleost and zebrafish from an evolutionary perspective. We also summarize recent progress in the field of molecular devel- opmental genetics, with a particular focus on the twin-tail goldfish morphology. Furthermore, we discuss unanswered questions relating to the evolution of the genome, developmental robustness, and morphologies in the goldfish lineage, with the goal of blazing a path toward an evodevo study paradigm using this tel- eost species as a new model species. © 2016 The Authors. WIREs Developmental Biology pub- lished by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. How to cite this article: WIREs Dev Biol 2016, 5:272–295. doi: 10.1002/wdev.224 INTRODUCTION processes of goldfish strains have been documented by authors in many different countries using different fi – he gold sh (Carassius auratus) is a well-known, languages.1 9 Of these reports, the descriptions by Tornamental, domesticated teleost species, which Smartt2 are the most up-to-date and cover the widest consists of a number of morphologically divergent range of the literature.
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