High School Student Produces First Genome Assembly for the Freshwater Angelfish (Pterophyllum scalare)

High school is a time for students to take classes that interest them, have fun and figure out what they want to do after graduation. Indeever Madireddy took his high school career a step farther and became the first to produce the genome assembly for a popular freshwater aquarium species. Madireddy has been an avid aquarium hobbyist and took that found passion to contribute to the scientific community. His high school in California did not have the resources to make this achievement happen but Madireddy didn’t let that stop him. He spent time researching the methodology and the reagents necessary to sequence a genome. With funding through Crowdfunding, Madireddy was ready to begin. He then paid a modest membership fee at BioCurious, which had all the equipment needed including the -80 degree C freezer and an Oxford Nanopore MinION long-read sequencer.

Freshwater Angelfish (Pterophyllum scalare) have long been a favorite among freshwater aquarium hobbyists due to their colorations and patterns, ease in care and their unique body shape. This species was the focal point to Madireddy’s research, which he made it even more personal by using his own pet Angel that had recently died. With the help from University of North Carolina’s Yuanyu Lin, Madireddy assembled and annotated the fish’s nearly 735 Mb genome. Thanks to Indeever Madireddy the sequence from P. scalare can now be the model organism for other cichlids’ genomes.

Aquatropic has long believed that having kids excited in the aquarium hobby would help foster a love for our oceans and bodies of freshwater, which would then push them to want to protect our oceans. This right here is the prime example of what the love for your pet fish can do! To learn more about Indeever Madireddy’s great achieve read more on The Scientist https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/genome-spotlight-freshwater-angelfish-pterophyllum-scalare-70691