Rainbow trout is the most cultivated fish in the Mountain State, and a team of West Virginia University scientists is working to make it tastier for consumers and more profitable for producers.
Jianbo Yao, Mohamed Salem and Brett Kenney, faculty in WVU s Division of Animal and Nutritional Sciences, have received a $380,000 grant to identify genes that could be used as biomarkers for muscle atrophy and fillet quality in the popular food fish. The award is from the USDA /CSREES National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program.
Muscle atrophy results from tissue breakdown that occurs when protein and energy are needed beyond what the fish consumes in its diet, according to the researchers in WVU s Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences.
In beef, this kind of breakdown is desirable because it causes tenderization. However in fish, this breakdown is undesirable because it can make the fillet too soft, indicative of lesser quality.
To study this phenomenon, Salem, Yao and Kenney are using females that can produce eggs and those that cannot.
We have found in preliminary work that females which do not produce eggs do not need to break muscle down,Kenney explained.Females that need this muscle protein to produce eggs will exhibit muscle atrophy. They will produce the poorest quality fillet.
The teams primary objective is to identify genetic markers that identify fish strains that are least likely to exhibit muscle atrophy, thereby producing a higher quality fillet.
The scientists are using state-of-the-art technology to hunt for the genes, including gene chip technology. Salem developed a new whole-genome chip for rainbow trout that has generated significant national and international interest.
Gene chip technology is reshaping molecular biology, he said.
Thousands of genes are orchestrated to orchestrate the life of a given living organism,Salem said.The traditional molecular biology methods work on one or a few genes at a time. Gene chip technology allows simultaneous monitoring of a whole genome of an organism on a single chip so that researchers can pursue the interactions among thousands of genes simultaneously.
The WVU research team recently presented the newly developed technology to members of the U.S. Aquaculture Society at their international meeting in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
The Journal of Fish Biology, a leading international journal for scientists engaged in all aspects of fish and fisheries research, both freshwater and marine, has also invited the scientists to write an article describing the technology that will be published in June.