Plant & Animal Genome VI Conference

W13

THE CHARACTERISTICS AND MAPPING OF DNA MARKERS IN Penaeus japonicus: TOWARDS INTEGRATED GENETIC MAPS IN PENAEID SHRIMP

1. CSIRO, Tropical Agriculture, Molecular Animal Genetics Centre, Gehrmann Laboratories, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, Queensland, Australia
2. CSIRO, Division of Marine Research, Cleveland, 4163, Queensland, Australia

Recent efforts in gene mapping of Penaied shrimp have met with a number of obstacles. Chief amongst these has been the difficulty in characterising large numbers of highly variable markers such as DNA microsatellites. These difficulties stem from the high number, length and complexity of sample sequence repeats present in these organisms. Unique flanking sequence suitable for PCR primer design has thus been difficult to obtain. An alternative approach utilising amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs) has been successfully applied to gene mapping in P. japonicus. This technique has allowed the rapid construction of a genetic map for this species. Both AFLP markers and those microsatellite markers which have been isolated from various species of Penaeus are, to a large degree, species specific. Cultured shrimp, however, comprise a number of species including P. vanameii, P. monodon, P. japonicus, P. chinesis and P. stylirostris. Faced with the prospect that genetic maps using highly variable markers will be species specific, methodologies must be established for integrating such maps and optimising the utility of QTL data gathered in any one species. Such strategies include mapping more conserved sequence elements such as transcribed sequences, which will enable PCR based mapping across species.