Plant & Animal Genome IX Conference

Workshop: Aquaculture
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STATUS OF GENOMIC RESOURCES IN TILAPIA (OREOCHROMIS SPP.)

Department of Zoology, University of New Hampshire, 216 Rudman Hall, 46 College Road, Durham, NH 03824 USA

Almost half of living teleost fishes belong to the order Perciformes. At a genomic level, the best-studied perciforms are the cichlid fishes of the genus Oreochromis, commonly known as tilapia. These economically important fishes are grown outdoors in ponds and indoors in recirculating systems around the world. The current linkage map of tilapia contains almost 500 microsatellite markers and 6 genes. The estimated map length is approximately 2000 cM arranged in 22 major linkage groups. Since the genome size is approximately 1Gb, we estimate an average of 500kb/cM. This linkage map has been used to identify QTL for skin color and sex, which are polygenic traits in these species. Several BAC libraries constructed at the Tokyo University of Fisheries have been picked and pooled for PCR screening. Ongoing work will construct a comparative map by isolating and partially sequencing BAC clones corresponding to microsatellites in the linkage map. These resources will speed the identification of candidate genes for the QTL we have identified. Tilapia Genome WWW site, http://tilapia.unh.edu.