Plant, Animal & Microbe Genomes X Conference

January 12-16, 2002
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Workshop: Aquaculture
          

A FUNCTIONAL GENOMICS APPROACH TO ANTIVIRAL IMMUNITY IN MARINE SHRIMP

¹ Marine Biomedicine and Environmental Sciences Program, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA

² Marine Resources Research Institute, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Charleston, SC 29412, USA

Viruses and their hosts interact in complex ways within the marine environment. How anthropogenic and natural factors influence these interactions is essentially unknown, particularly because the antiviral immunity of most marine organisms, especially invertebrates, is poorly understood. We use marine shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) and the DNA virus causative of White Spot Syndrome (WSSV) as a model to study the antiviral response in marine crustaceans, which are essential components of virtually every marine ecosystem. Because no information is available on the mechanisms of antiviral immunity in invertebrates, our strategy relies on the discovery of novel genes with putative roles in antiviral defense. We hypothesize that viral infection triggers changes in gene expression that are at least partially reflective of an immune response. By characterizing these virus-responsive genes, we aim to gain an understanding about the kinds of pathways involved in the invertebrate antiviral defense. Our strategy involves the use of cDNA microarrays constructed by random EST selection from standard and normalized cDNA libraries, and by enrichment of virus-responsive genes in libraries derived from subtractive hybridization.