The great white shark, one of the most fearsome predators in the world's oceans in both fact and fiction, is a formidable creature — right down to its genes.

Scientists on Monday said they have decoded the genome of Earth's largest predatory fish, detecting numerous genetic traits that help explain its remarkable evolutionary success, including molecular adaptations to enhance wound healing as well as genomic stability such as DNA repair and DNA damage tolerance.

The great white shark, whose scientific name is Carcharodon carcharias, boasts a very large genome, 1½ times bigger than the human genome.