Differences in brain transcriptomes of closely related Baikal coregonid species.

The aim of this work was to get deeper insight into genetic factors involved in the adaptive divergence of closely related species, specifically two representatives of Baikal coregonids--Baikal whitefish (Coregonus baicalensis Dybowski) and Baikal omul (Coregonus migratorius Georgi)--that diverged from a common ancestor as recently as 10-20 thousand years ago. Using the Serial Analysis of Gene Expression method, we obtained libraries of short representative cDNA sequences (tags) from the brains of Baikal whitefish and omul. A comparative analysis of the libraries revealed quantitative differences among ~4% tags of the fishes under study.