Latimeria chalumnae (African coelacanth) genome, fLatCha1, sequence data
The African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) is a lobe-finned fish or crossopterygian, one of two extant species of coelacanth, a rare order of vertebrates more closely related to lungfish and tetrapods than to the common ray-finned fishes. The African coelacanth was believed to have been extinct over 65 million years ago, but was rediscovered off the coast of South Africa in 1938. (from Wikipedia and NOAA fisheries entries). This sample of an individual found on the Comoros Islands was procured by Ahamada Said and Chris Amemiya, and used to generate a high-quality reference genome for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP). Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genome Lab (VGL) at the Rockefeller University, led by Erich D. Jarvis, Olivier Fedrigo, Giulio Formenti, and Jennifer Balacco.