Uncovering genomic and transcriptomic complexities in two important Australian aquaculture species; the Sydney rock oyster (Saccostrea glomerata) and the banana shrimp (Fenneropenaeus merguiensis)
Despite some recent progress towards sustainable harvesting, the world’s marine fisheries continue in a state of decline. World food fish production from aquaculture has expanded almost 12 fold over the last three decades as a response, though aquaculture production is vulnerable to adverse impacts such as changing environmental conditions and disease. Methods to secure and improve production and quality are desperately needed if aquaculture is to continue to enhance the world’s available food fish supply. The application of biotechnology in aquaculture is one of the most promising avenues for developing solutions to these challenges. However, a major factor affecting its advancement is the lack of molecular resources. The recent revolution in high-throughput, next-generation sequencing technologies has placed the development of such resources within the reach of most research groups. This PhD study aims to develop new resources for two important species to the Australian aquaculture industry using these next-generation technologies. The first in-depth examination of the transcriptional content of 8 different tissues from cultured banana shrimp was undertaken using RNA-Seq technologies. A combination of Roche 454FLX and illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencing data was used to produce a reference assembly of 124,631 transcripts from which a total of 59,179 protein sequences were predicted. Further analysis revealed a rich set of transcript sequences exhibiting homology with genes associated with reproduction, sex determination and development and distinguished the tissues responsible for this expression. These data add a substantial contribution to the sequence information made available for F. merguiensis.
Description
Submitted in the fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Sunshine Coast, 2017.