NRSP-8: NAGRP Aquaculture Genome Program

8

From: John Liu [mailto:zliu@acesag.auburn.edu]
Sent: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 06:07:13 -0600
To: aquaculturegenomics@acesag.auburn.edu
Subject: [aquaculturegenomics] Aquaculture genomics Newsletter 8

o  Another great success of the Aquaculture Genomics Workshop: The 
2006 Aquaculture Genomics Workshop was held January 14-15, 2006 at the 
Town and Country Hotel in San Diego along with the XIV Plant and Animal 
Genome (PAG XIV) Conference.  We had a large attendance of over 150 
participants. The Workshop consisted of 24 oral presentations including 
three invited speakers, 12 graduate student/post doc travel award 
recipients, 5 other graduate students/post docs, and 4 primary 
investigators.  At the conclusion of the first day the Aquaculture 
Business Meeting was conducted by Dr. John Liu, followed by a reception 
at the Terrace Pavilion sponsored by Genome Canada where 40 poster 
presentations were displayed.  The invited speakers were Dr. John 
Quackenbush, Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics in the 
Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health; Dr. 
Hein van der Steen, Director of Animal Science Research at Sygen and the 
Technical Director for SyAqua in Franklin, Kentucky; and Dr. Lawrence 
Schook, Faculty of Excellence Professor of Comparative Genomics in the 
Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign.  Dr. Quackenbush presented his seminar entitled 
“Extracting Biological Meaning from High-Dimensional –Omics Datasets.”
Dr. Hein van der Steen made his presentation of “Application of Genetics 
and Genome Technologies to the Genetic Improvement of Aquaculture 
Species.” Dr. Schook’s made a presentation of “A Case Study for 
Developing a Genome Sequence Project: The Swine Genome Sequencing 
Initiative.”  Dr. Caird Rexroad of USDA ARS National Center for Cool and 
Cold Water Aquaculture was the organizer for the Workshop.  Please join 
me to congratulate Dr. Rexroad for the success and thank him for his 
great effort.
 
o  Dr. Dennis Hedgecock of the University of Southern California will 
be the next Workshop Organizer: Dr. Dennis Hedgecock of the University of 
Southern California will be the next organizer for the Aquaculture 
Genomics Workshop to be held in San Diego next January.  If you have any 
suggestions or comments concerning the format and organization of the 
Workshop, please contact Dr. Hedgecock (dhedge@usc.edu).
 
o  Dr. Geoff Waldbieser was elected to be the Chair-elect (secretary).  
Dr. Geoff Waldbieser of the USDA ARS Catfish Genetics Unit was elected to 
serve as the Chair-elect (secretary) for 2006-2007 year, and he will 
serve as the Chair in 2007-2008 and as the organizer of 2008 Aquaculture 
Genomics Workshop.
 
o  The first oyster microarray is now available for the research 
community: An informal consortium* of oyster researchers from Norway, 
France and the US came together back in 2003 and agreed to pool all of 
their cDNA clones from Crassostrea virginica and C. gigas, in order to 
generate a tool valuable for all oyster researchers interested in the 
functional genomics of these species. This microarray has now been 
printed, and contains 4,460 clones from C. virginica, and 2,320 from C. 
gigas, along with 17 non-oyster control sequences. This microarray was 
printed by the Genomics Core Facility at the Hollings Marine Laboratory 
in Charleston, Director Dr Paul Gross. A manuscript describing the 
properties and performance of this microarray as tool for investigating 
the meta-transcriptome of Crassostrea is in preparation. Investigators 
who are interested in using this tool in their research are invited to 
contact Paul Gross grossp@musc.edu for details on its availability. 
*Oyster cDNA clones were contributed by Eveyne Bachère, Viviane Boulo, 
Bob Chapman, Charles Cunningham, Jean-Michel Escoubas, Ximing Guo, Amaury 
Herpin, Matt Jenny, John Liu, Arnaud Tanguy, and Greg Warr.
 
o  Two BAC libraries of oysters are now available: A group of 
scientists including Cunningham, Charles; Hikima, Jun-ichi; Jenny, 
Matthew; Chapman, Robert; Fang, Guang-Chen; Saski, Chris; Lundqvist, 
Mats; Cupit, Pauline; Tomkins, Jeff; and Warr, Greg have published a 
paper on characterization of two BAC libraries in Marine Biotechnology 
entitled “New Resources for Marine Genomics: BAC libraries for the 
Eastern and Pacific oysters (Crassostrea virginica and C. gigas)”.  These 
resources should be highly valuable for oyster research.  Contact the 
authors if you need more information.  
 
o  Israeli and US scientists met to plan for the future of aquaculture 
genetics research: A group of Israeli and US scientists met February 
21-24 in Eilat, Israel to present current status of aquaculture genetics, 
genomics, and breeding programs, to discuss the challenges aquaculture 
geneticists face, and to seek solutions to enhance aquaculture genetics 
research in general.  The papers presented in the conference and the 
synopsis will be published in Israeli Journal of Aquaculture.  For a look 
of the program and topics of the discussion, please visit 
http://aquaculture.ocean.org.il/bard.html. 
 
o  The Tenth Congress of the International Society for Developmental 
and Comparative Immunology will be held in Charleston, South Carolina, 
July 1-6, 2006.  All the high caliber immunologists working with species 
related to aquaculture will be there.  For more information on this 
conference, please visit http://www.isdci.org/eboard.php. 
 
o  SEND your USDA-funded success stories to CSREES Muquarrab Qureshi, 
NAGRP Leader, which can be used to highlight the impact of your research 
on animal agriculture and wellbeing. Pictures and/or web links, links to 
key publications, journal cover pages, or other stories are welcome. 
Please indicate if the work was supported by USDA and/or any federal or 
industry partnership. Send your material to mqureshi@csrees.usda.gov . 
Thanks in advance for your help.