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The genomic 'inner fish' and a regulatory enigma in the vertebrates

John Malone and Brian Oliver

Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA

Journal of Biology 2009, 8:32doi:10.1186/jbiol131

Published:	16 April 2009

Abstract

Information on how genomic information from fish to human encodes the same tissues has until now emerged one gene at a time. The study published in this issue now provides lists of genes and their expression levels for 20 vertebrate tissues spanning 450 million years of vertebrate evolution. It reveals a core set of genes with similar tissue-expression patterns yet no common regulatory signatures – a gene-expression paradox.