New insights from genomics on the molecular basis of lipoprotein metabolism in fish

Abstract

Fish species have recently become powerful model systems for analysis of vertebrate development and human disease. High throughput gene and expressed sequence tag (EST) mapping projects in fish are now facilitating our understanding of the relationship between vertebrates genomes and will help identify roles for human genes from fish mutations. Mutant screens in zebrafish are performed routinely, resulting in sizable collections of mutations causing a variety of developmental and physiological defects including digestive organ and lipid processing. Fish gene maps showed duplicated chromosome segments and blocks of numerous conserved syntenies between fish and human. The function of putatively orthologous and paralogous genes can, nonetheless, be different. In the context of the current revolution linking genes and pathways to integrative physiology, numerous fields, including fish physiology, are being redefined. Fish species are useful animal models for studying lipid metabolism and transport. The task of linking genes to function improve our knowledge of the molecular basis of lipid and lipoprotein metabolism in fish, and support the existence of related lipid processing mechanisms in mammals and teleosts.