Plant & Animal Genome IX Conference

Poster: Aquaculture
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TRANSCRIPTOME ANALYSIS OF CHANNEL CATFISH (Ictalurus punctatus): GENE CATALOGUING AND PROFILING FROM THE HEAD KIDNEY

The Fish Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology Laboratory, Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures and the Program of Cell and Molecular Biosciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849 USA

Characteristics of tissues, organs, and organisms are determined by their genes and gene expression. Gene cataloguing and profiling using specific tissues provides both qualitative and quantitative patterns of gene expression. Analysis of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) is an efficient approach not only for gene cataloguing and profiling, but also for development of molecular resources that are useful for functional genomics. As part of the transcriptome analysis in channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus), we have conducted EST analysis for gene identification, profiling, and cataloguing using a cDNA library made from the head kidney. We have analyzed 2228 EST clones from head kidney and categorized them into 22 major functional groups and 30 subgroups. Of the 2,228 clones, 1,218 clones (54.67%) were identified as orthologues of known genes from other organisms and 1010 clones (45.33%) as unknown gene clones by BLASTN searches. The 1,218 known clones represent transcripts of 516 genes. The largest group of known genes included genes involved in translational machinery (20.9%), followed by enzymes (7.43%), and structural genes (5.70%). Analysis of expression profiles in functional categories indicated coordinated expression. Computational proteomics analysis using BLASTX has identified over 200 more genes reducing the number of unknown gene clones to less than 800 clones. Further analysis of disease resistance related genes using cDNA microarrays are underway in our laboratory.