Cephalopods (squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus) are emerging animal models and include iconic species for studying the link between genomic innovations and physiological and behavioral complexities. Coleoid cephalopods (cuttlefish, squid, and octopus) possess the largest nervous system among invertebrates. The common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) has been at the center of a long-standing tradition of research into diverse aspects of cephalopod biology, including behavioral and neural plasticity, learning and memory recall, regeneration, and sophisticated cognition. However, no chromosome-scale genome assembly was available for the common octopus to aid in functional studies. To fill this gap, researchers sequenced and assembled a chromosome-scale genome of this species.
“Octopus vulgaris has long been used as a model for the study of learning and cognitive capabilities in invertebrates, and is also used as a comparative system in the study of neural organization and evolution,” said University of Vienna researcher Dalila Destanović and colleagues.
“Furthermore, recent advances in the culture of this species’ early life stages have increased its suitability for molecular approaches and have provided important developmental staging information.”
“One bottleneck to studying Octopus vulgaris is the lack of a chromosome-scale genome assembly.”
In their research, the authors sequenced the genome of an adult male Octopus vulgaris collected in the Gulf of Naples, Italy by fishermen in May 2021.
This reference genome, which is highly resolved at the chromosome level, will allow the scientific community to better understand the characteristics and biology of these fascinating animals on the one hand, and also to trace the evolutionary history of Octopus vulgaris on the other.
“With our current technologies used in genomics research, we were able to create a kind of ‘genome map’ for the octopus, showing how genetic information is arranged at the…
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