Shrimp DNA Sequencing

1534 Views 9 Replies 6 Participants Last post by Soothing Shrimp, Mar 11, 2014

Soothing Shrimp

Discussion Starter · Mar 10, 2014

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the color codes of shrimp will not be unveiled until multiple DNA sequencing occurs to find where on the DNA the color takes place, and the differences between color from the same species.

In my research today I found this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21495

Very cool. I'll never have the moola for it, but it's nice to have a dream. :smile:

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Soothing Shrimp

Discussion Starter · #2 · Mar 10, 2014

BTW shrimp in general have 254 chromosomes, while fairy shrimp have 700.

Compare that with only 46 human chromosomes, and we start to see why shrimp are so complex.

But who knows? Maybe color is ubber simple?

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takelow

· #3 · Mar 10, 2014

Soothing Shrimp said:
BTW shrimp in general have 254 chromosomes, while fairy shrimp have 700.

Compare that with only 46 human chromosomes, and we start to see why shrimp are so complex.

But who knows? Maybe color is ubber simple?

Be carefull with this type of biological comments.
There is not any connexion between the number of chromosomes and the complexity of a specie.
For example, the fern Ophioglossum reticulatum possess 1440 chromosomes. Is this making the fern biologically more complex than humans?
Not sure...

However, i agree that a comprehensive genome sequencing of the differents species and strains would add a lot off benefits in the comprehension of ours shrimps.

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teqvet

· #4 · Mar 10, 2014

neat article. I bet those sticks become commonplace in the next decade.

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Darkblade48

· #5 · Mar 10, 2014

Oh this. I read about this a few weeks ago (my group is working towards developing a single cell sequencer, so we work with a lot of DNA sequencing technology). It's an interesting technology (nanopore); not too sure how reliable it is yet (the product is still in its early beta testing phase).

It will be interesting to see how this develops

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pucksr

· #6 · Mar 10, 2014 (Edited)

takelow said:
Be carefull with this type of biological comments.
There is not any connexion between the number of chromosomes and the complexity of a specie.
For example, the fern Ophioglossum reticulatum possess 1440 chromosomes. Is this making the fern biologically more complex than humans?
Not sure...

However, i agree that a comprehensive genome sequencing of the differents species and strains would add a lot off benefits in the comprehension of ours shrimps.

Well, it depends on what you mean by complex. Considering that there is no standard definition outside of mathematics, I would argue that the only measure of the complexity of an organism is the complexity of a genetic sequence.

I mean, you could say that a squirrel is more complex than a shrimp, but what are you basing that fact on? I understand that the number of organs is fewer in the shrimp, but does that imply decreased complexity. You could also argue fewer cells, but then a tree becomes far more complex than a squirrel. It all gets a bit vague since complexity doesn't have any real definition.

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Soothing Shrimp

Discussion Starter · #7 · Mar 10, 2014

Takelow and pucksr, points taken. heh

I guess I meant more "troublesome" finding the places on which colors may or may not reside.

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@[email protected]

· #8 · Mar 10, 2014

pucksr said:
Well, it depends on what you mean by complex. Considering that there is no standard definition outside of mathematics, I would argue that the only measure of the complexity of an organism is the complexity of a genetic sequence.

I mean, you could say that a squirrel is more complex than a shrimp, but what are you basing that fact on? I understand that the number of organs is fewer in the shrimp, but does that imply decreased complexity. You could also argue fewer cells, but then a tree becomes far more complex than a squirrel. It all gets a bit vague since complexity doesn't have any real definition.

Number of chromosomes doesnt necessarily correlate to number number genes. Chromosome size varies, as does telomere length on the chromosome. And the genes are usually not dense at all.
Also organisms can have duplicates of chromosomes. Humans have 2 each, but some plants have 6 or more. Tomatoes and grapes if I remember right jave the same genes but a nondisjunction separated the two when one had more chromosomes.

Complexity is on several levels. Genetic complexity would refer to the amount of distinct genes, but via alternative splicing, euchariotes can produce multiple polypeptides off the same gene.
Genetic complexity does not always translate to structural complexity however. For instance a closed vs open circulatory system in arthropods vs chordates

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pucksr

· #9 · Mar 10, 2014

@[email protected] said:
Genetic complexity does not always translate to structural complexity however. For instance a closed vs open circulatory system in arthropods vs chordates

My earlier point was primarily that there is no actual difference in "complexity" between a closed vs open circulatory system. We commonly apply the term "more complex", but the term doesn't really fit.
It was more of an aside than anything. Complexity is really only a measurable quantity when applied to data.

People tend to think of a eukaryote as more complex than a prokaryote, but I don't know if the term(complex) fits particularly well. Just my 2 cents.

On the topic of shrimp though, I think this would be fascinating. I think we have some very convoluted organizations of decapoda. For example, we have 4 contested types of tiger shrimp(black tiger, super black tiger, red tiger, and tangerine tiger). We don't know if the colors are simply color morphs of the same species or wholly unique species. We know there is a red color morph of black tiger, but we don't know if this is at all similar to red tigers. Measuring the genetic variation between the strains would, at the very least give us some ability to calculate time of separation between strains.

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Soothing Shrimp

Discussion Starter · #10 · Mar 11, 2014

"We don't know if the colors are simply color morphs of the same species or wholly unique species."

Exactly. Sequencing would be able to tell us this as well!

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