Plant & Animal Genomes XV Conference

January 13-17, 2007
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Conservation Genomics Of Atlantic Salmon: Towards Understanding Adaptive Trait Differences For The Management Of Endangered Populations

Elizabeth G Boulding¹ , Keng Pee Ang² , Paul R. Berg³ , Ian A. Fleming⁴ , Brian Glebe⁵ , Sigbjørn Lien^3,6 , Danielle MacDonald^7,8 , Thomas Moen^3,9 , Paloma Moràn¹⁰ , Patrick O’Reilly⁸ , Patricia M. Schulte¹¹

¹  Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road E., Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada

²  Cooke Aquaculture, 874 Main Street, Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, E5H 1E6, Canada

³  CIGENE - Centre for Integrative Genetics, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, PO Box 5003, N-1432 Ås, Norway

⁴  Ocean Sciences Centre, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, A1C 5S7, Canada

⁵  Department of Fisheries and Oceans, St Andrews Biological Station, 531 Brandy Cove Road, St. Andrews, New Brunswick, E5B 2L9, Canada

⁶  Department of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Box 5003, N-1432 Ås, Norway

⁷  Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Mactaquac Biodiversity Facility, 114 Fish Hatchery Lane, French Village, New Brunswick, B3E 2C6, Canada

⁸  Population Ecology Division, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, #1 Challenger Drive, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia B2Y 4A2, Canada

⁹  AKVAFORSK - The Institute of Aquaculture Research, Box 5010, N-1432, Ås, Norway

¹⁰  Departamento de Bioquímica, Genética e Inmunología, Facultad de Biología, Campus Universitario de Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain

¹¹  Dept. of Zoology, UBC, 6270 University Blvd., Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada

Many Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations in eastern Canada and the United States are endangered and many rivers have lost their indigenous, locally adapted river-specific juveniles. Therefore, it is critical to document differences among populations at the whole genome level both to aid conservation efforts and to enable allele mining for introgression into aquacultural strains. Genome Canada’s new GRASP gene expression microarray is allowing us to assay 16,000 different genes from each fish but does not tell us how much of the observed variation in gene expression among different salmon populations is genetic. We have created four backcrosses by crossing Trans-Atlantic F1 males to a female from either the European or the North American parental populations. These four large full sib research families are segregating for the alleles that are unique to each of the original parental strains and enable us to identify genes whose expression level is strongly correlated with morphological, behavioral, or life history traits. To verify that these correlations have a genetic basis we are genotyping the families for several hundred SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) from expressed sequence tags on a Norwegian SNP linkage map. We will then use SNP markers linked to quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for traits under selection to genotype tail clips from endangered wild Atlantic salmon that are held in a common hatchery environment. This will enable us to document the genetic differences in functional traits among these endangered salmon populations and may assist in their conservation.