Takifugu rubripes is a pufferfish

Pufferfish

Tetraodontidae is a family of primarily marine and estuarine fish of the Tetraodontiformes order. The family includes many familiar species which are variously called pufferfish, balloonfish, blowfish, bubblefish, globefish, swellfish, toadfish, toadies, honey toads, sugar toads, and sea squab...

 in the genus Takifugu

Takifugu

Takifugu is a genus of pufferfish, often better known by the Japanese name . There are 25 species belonging to the genus Takifugu, which can be found worldwide from about 45° latitude north to 45° latitude south, mostly in salt water. Their diet consists mostly of algae, molluscs, invertebrates...

. A feature of this species is that it has a very small genome

Genome

In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....

, which is used as a ‘reference’ for identifying genes and other elements in human and other vertebrate genomes. The genome was published in 2002, the first vertebrate genome to be made publicly available after the human genome

Human genome

The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs plus the small mitochondrial DNA. 22 of the 23 chromosomes are autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex-determining...

.

Taxonomy

Although often known in the genomics literature as Fugu rubripes, the genus Fugu is a synonym of Takifugu

Takifugu

Takifugu is a genus of pufferfish, often better known by the Japanese name . There are 25 species belonging to the genus Takifugu, which can be found worldwide from about 45° latitude north to 45° latitude south, mostly in salt water. Their diet consists mostly of algae, molluscs, invertebrates...

, hence the name Takifugu rubripes is currently used for this fish.

External links

• NCBI Taxonomy
• Fugu Genome Project