The blunt snout bream Megalobrama amblycephala is the economically most important cyprinid fish species. As an herbivore, it can be grown by eco-friendly and resource-conserving aquaculture. However, the large number of intermuscular bones in the trunk musculature is adverse to fish meat processing and consumption. As a first towards optimizing this aquatic livestock, we present a 1.116-Gb draft genome of M. amblycephala, with 779.54 Mb anchored on 24 linkage groups. Integrating spatiotemporal transcriptome analyses, we show that intermuscular bone is formed in the more basal teleosts by intramembranous ossification and may be involved in muscle contractibility and coordinating cellular events. Comparative analysis revealed that olfactory receptor genes, especially of the beta type, underwent an extensive expansion in herbivorous cyprinids, whereas the gene for the umami receptor T1R1 was specifically lost in M. amblycephala. The composition of gut microflora, which contributes to the herbivorous adaptation of M. amblycephala, was found to be similar to that of other herbivores. As a valuable resource for the improvement of M. amblycephala livestock, the draft genome sequence offers new insights into the development of intermuscular bone and herbivorous adaptation.

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Natural products (NP), especially medicinal plants, have been used worldwide to treat numerous diseases for thousands of years. However, drug discovery focus has been moving away from identifying lead compounds from complex mixtures of crude NP because this approach is technically difficult and inefficient. We here present a quick, accurate and practical method for screening leads targeting a nuclear receptor from NP mixtures. Using themethod, we rapidly identified erythrotriol as a new lead compoundfrom medicinal plant Hibiscus syriacus L.targeting RXRα for treating cancer with less side effects. This method can efficiently and profitably screen lead compounds targeting nuclear receptors and may reinvigorate interest in NP as sources of pharmaceutical agents.

A unicellular marine diatom,