Despite widespread fascination with sharks, the world’s
oldest ocean predators have long been a genetic mystery. The first deep dive
into a great white shark’s genetic code has fished up big surprises behind a
design so effective it has barely changed since before dinosaurs roamed.
Cornell researchers have discovered that many of the
endangered great white shark’s proteins involved in an array of different
functions – including metabolism – match humans more closely than they do
zebrafish, the quintessential fish model.