Grant: Engage Grants Program

Acipenserids are a primative group of fishes, that contain many (approximately 17 of 25) caviar producing fishspecies that are harvested with high market value. Within Canada, the white sturgeon (Acipensertransmontanus) is farmed In British Columbia (Target Marine Hatcheries) and more recently Atlantic (A.oxyrhynchus) and shortnose sturgeon (A. brevirostrum) have been farmed in Eastern Canada by two othercompanies. Over the past decade this industry has grown exponentially, but market demand and growth canhave some negative impacts, such as requirement of higher throughput and higher densities in culture, whichcan strain the physiological limits of the fish and lead to greater susceptibility to pathogens and externalstressors. A previously successful Engage grant (428583-11) from our research group in collaboration withAcadian Sturgeon and Caviar Inc., identified gaps in the current production, R&D, and quality assurance facetsof the industry. These relate to the fact that although conservation and ecology of adult sturgeon in somespecies have been relatively well studied, and mitochondrial genomes are available for 4 of the higher valuedspecies', there is little to no genomic information on white sturgeon and a worse case for shortnose and Atlanticsturgeon. These resources are imperative to identifying high quality broodstock (i.e. superior growth and eggproduction), research for optimizing culture conditions, and biomarkers for real-time health monitoring (i.e.very important in sturgeons with subtle stress responses compared to teleosts) and ease of differentiation fromwild sources (ie. IUCN Red List of threatened species). Next-generation sequencing (NGS) will be used tocharacterize the sturgeon transcriptome and to identify genes involved in the sturgeon immune responses.Given the lack of available resources for sturgeon and the fact this species' genome is duplicated more thanonce, pair-end HiSeq technology will be utilized to provide enough coverage and read length to assemble thetranscriptome de novo. Our objectives will be 1. Characterize the antibacterial and antiparasitic responses inAtlantic sturgeon; 2. Generate genomic resources and identify common biomarkers for Atlantic sturgeon.