Post #924

Looking back over the past year, it was filled with energy and determination, though far from stress-free. One of the most demanding challenges was collecting tissue samples for chromosome-level genome sequencing of a rare fish species. The process was exceptionally complex. First, locating a live specimen of such a rare fish in the wild required extensive fieldwork and considerable effort. Next, the tissues had to be immediately preserved in liquid nitrogen, demanding strict temperature control under remote and often difficult conditions. However, the most logistically challenging and mentally taxing step was transporting the frozen samples—first from Khorezm to Tashkent, then from Tashkent to Beijing by airplane—using dry ice (solid carbon dioxide), a substance that can become hazardous under improper conditions. Coordinating this journey across international borders, while ensuring the samples remained intact and legally compliant, was an ordeal that is difficult to put into words. After consulting numerous researchers, it became clear that such an operation had not been previously attempted in Uzbekistan—and perhaps not anywhere in Central Asia. What was all this for? The goal was to sequence the entire genome of a rare fish at the chromosome level—comparable in resolution to the sequencing of the human genome. If not any genome before our publication, this will represent the first chromosome-level genome of any animal from Central Asia. https://t.me/EvolutionaryGenomics