TA2 Molecular Indicators for Ecological Exposure
255 Portland Ballroom
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM, Tuesday
() Microarrays and Genome Research on Atlantic Salmon (GRASP).
Koop, B1, Davidson, W2, 1 Department of Biology University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada2 Molecular Biology and Biochemistry Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
ABSTRACT- The GRASP project is designed to provide a foundation for understanding the genome of Atlantic salmon. The genomic information gained from Atlantic salmon has been shown to be applicable to other salmonid species and will benefit conservation and enhancement of wild stocks, aquaculture and environmental assessments. Genomic resources also enable us to address fundamental scientific questions concerning the evolution of salmonid genomes, and will facilitate monitoring the expression of genes and proteins in a wide variety of natural and altered environments. Towards these goals, more than 100 cDNA libraries have been constructed from a wide variety of tissues and different developmental stages. From these libraries more than 100,000 DNA sequence reads (plus 15,000 from Rainbow trout) primarily from the 3' ends of these expressed sequence tags (ESTs) have been completed. These sequences have been combined into over 30,000 unique contigs in Atlantic salmon and 8,000 contigs in Rainbow trout.. A BAC library of 313,000 clones (avg insert 190,000kb) has been constructed in collaboration with Bjorn Hoyheim and GRASP has now completed fingerprinting 200,000 BACs and is building physical BAC contigs. Efforts have started to put many ESTs and microsatellite markers onto this physical map. With the EST sequences, a preliminary microarray of 3,700 cDNAs has been made and initial expression studies have indicated that the array works very well for all salmonids and even some more distant species. Preliminary studies have also shown the array to provide a wealth of new data in the study of cellular and tissue responses to pollutants, diseases and stress, as well as in the study of reproduction and development . On the basis of these results a larger array of 16,000 genes has just been completed and has been tested. Initial results show a great sensitivity of gene expression patterns to small environmental changes. This presentation will give an update on the status of the new arrays and some initial results with industrial and municipal effluents as well as provide information on the use of array technology for environmental assessment.
Key words: microarrays, Salmon, genomics