The Sea Lamprey is interesting to study due to it's phylogenetic position (from an ancient lineage the possibly diverged from the vertebrate stem about 550 million years ago) as well as it's complex genome. An analysis of the gremline genome in the Sea Lamprey have shown that chromosomal and genome duplication have played a large part in it's evolution including evidence from six lamprey HOX clusters. There is also evidence of gene elimination in somatic cells early on in lamprey development. Results from this study help to support the use of the Sea Lamprey as comparative evolutionary model because if it's broad chromosomal structure that can be used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of a vast majority of genes and within vertebrate lineages.
You can find the original article in nature here.
-Sam
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