ABSTRACT: Profiling of the embryonic Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus L.) transcriptome reveals maternal transcripts as potential markers of embryo quality
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:Egg quality is of pivotal importance in biomedicine, agriculture, ecology and environmental science because of its tremendous influence on reproductive success or failure in all animals. Despite species specific differences in physiological aspects of early development, the evolutionary conserved stereotypical procedure of cellular events, led us to investigate whether these findings are common with marine fish species of aquaculture interest. Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus) is a highly prized species in global fish markets with increasing demand to its production. The objectives of this study were 1) to reveal the proteomic profiles of good versus poor quality halibut eggs, 2) to identify proteins that can serve as egg quality markers, and 3) to discover molecular mechanisms determining egg quality using a combination of quantitative proteomics workflows, tandem mass tags (TMT) labeling and parallel reaction monitoring (PRM).
