Use of the Japanese pufferfish (Fugu rubripes) in comparative genomics

With the draft sequence of the human genome available and an increasing num ber of organisms being sequenced, attention is becoming focused on sequence interpretation and functional analysis. Comparative genomics will play an important role in evaluating these data. At the molecular level, roles for uncharacterized proteins can be hypothesized by identifying conserved prote in domains and putative noncoding regulatory elements can be defined from d irect sequence comparisons of evolutionarily distant organisms. At a higher level, questions, such as the importance of gene order positioning, conser vation of linkage, and genome evolution, can begin to be answered by collec ting map data from different organisms. This minireview, centering on Fugu regions sharing synteny with human chromosomes 11p, 20q, and 6p21.3, detail s some of the ways in which the Japanese pufferfish can contribute to the s tudy of comparative genomics and evaluation of sequence data from the genom e programs.