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Abstract
The zebrafish is an important vertebrate model for the mutational analysis of genes
effecting developmental processes. Understanding the relationship between zebrafish
genes and mutations with those of humans will require understanding the syntenic correspondence
between the zebrafish and human genomes. High throughput gene and EST mapping projects
in zebrafish are now facilitating this goal. Map positions for 523 zebrafish genes
and ESTs with predicted human orthologs reveal extensive contiguous blocks of synteny
between the zebrafish and human genomes. Eighty percent of genes and ESTs analyzed
belong to conserved synteny groups (two or more genes linked in both zebrafish and
human) and 56% of all genes analyzed fall in 118 homology segments (uninterrupted
segments containing two or more contiguous genes or ESTs with conserved map order
between the zebrafish and human genomes). This work now provides a syntenic relationship
to the human genome for the majority of the zebrafish genome.