| Title | Gulf Killifish Have Evolved to Thrive in Intensely Polluted Water | |
| Date | Monday May 06 2019, @10:18PM | |
| Author | Fnord666 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the sounds-fishy-to-me dept. | ||
Submitted via IRC for mrpg
A small fish somehow evolved resistance to the heavily polluted water of the Houston Ship Channel by mysteriously acquiring genes from another fish from thousands of miles away, according to a new paper.
The researchers captured killifish from 12 increasingly polluted sites along the Houston Shop[sic] Channel and in Galveston Bay. They had the fish spawn in a laboratory and tested how the embryos fared against a pollutant called polychlorinated biphenyl. Fish from the most polluted sites could withstand concentrations 1,000 times higher than normally harmful levels, according to the paper published in Science.
But the incredible realization of how this fish evolved its pollution resistance came from genetic testing. A pair [of] genes from the pollutant-resistant Gulf killifish, including a segment with deleted DNA that seemed to account for the resistance, appeared to come directly from another species, the Atlantic killifish. The researchers estimated that this little bit of genetic material entered the Gulf killifish's gene pool no more than 34 generations ago, after a Gulf killifish hybridized with an Atlantic killifish.
Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish
Source: https://gizmodo.com/this-fish-has-evolved-to-thrive-in-intensely-polluted-w-1834473178
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printed from SoylentNews, Gulf Killifish Have Evolved to Thrive in Intensely Polluted Water on 2023-07-07 01:03:43