Project description:Commercial Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus) farming is restricted by variable oocyte quality, slow growth, and early maturation of male fish. Maternally transferred components regulate early developmental processes; therefore, they have an effect on the future development of an embryo. We profiled components of the transcriptome involved in immune defence as well as germline and muscle development during early developmental stages: 8-cell embryos, germ ring stage, 10-somite stage, and hatched embryos using a 10k oligonucleotide array and quantitative real-time PCR to specifically identify transcripts useful as molecular markers of embryo quality.
Project description:Profiling of the embryonic Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus L.) transcriptome reveals maternal transcripts as potential markers of embryo quality
Project description:An oligonucleotide microarray containing 50-mer oligonucleotides representing 9277 unique Atlantic halibut genes has been designed, printed and is currently being used for the study of gene expression in developing halibut. The oligonucleotides are based on all of the Atlantic halibut data available at the time of printing; these included ESTs and complete cDNAs derived from the Pleurogene sequencing project as well as sequences deposited in GenBank by other groups as of September 2006. Of the Pleurogene ESTs, 5040 are functionally annotated; the remainder are unknown (1016) or are similar to unannotated sequences in GenBank (1626). In addition to Atlantic halibut features, several control features have been incorporated, including an oligonucleotide representing a heterologous plant gene (92 spots) and empty spots containing buffer only (1344). The array contains 48 subgrids, each comprised of 32 columns and 26 rows. Every feature is printed at least four times as side-by-side quadruplicates, resulting in a microarray containing 39936 features. This microarray has been utilized to identify genes differentially expressed in larval Atlantic halibut during the developmental period from post-hatch to post-metamorphosis. Keywords: Development stage comparison
