Genomic tools and selective breeding in molluscs
Date
18/07/2018Funder
Grant ID
654008
Keywords
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Abstract
The production of most farmed molluscs, including mussels, oysters, scallops, abalone, and clams, is heavily dependent on natural seed from the plankton. Closing the lifecycle of species in hatcheries can secure independence from wild stocks and enables long-term genetic improvement of broodstock through selective breeding. Genomic techniques have the potential to revolutionize hatchery-based selective breeding by improving our understanding of the characteristics of mollusc genetics that can pose a challenge for intensive aquaculture and by providing a new suite of tools for genetic improvement. Here we review characteristics of the life history and genetics of molluscs including high fecundity, self-fertilization, high genetic diversity, genetic load, high incidence of deleterious mutations and segregation distortion and critically assess their impact on the design and effectiveness of selective breeding strategies. A survey of the results of current breeding programs in the literature show that selective breeding with inbreeding control is likely the best strategy for genetic improvement of most molluscs, and on average growth rate can be improved by 10% per generation and disease resistance by 15% per generation across the major farmed species by implementing individual or family-based selection. Rapid advances in sequencing technology have resulted in a wealth of genomic resources for key species with the potential to greatly improve hatchery-based selective breeding of molluscs. In this review, we catalogue the range of genomic resources currently available for molluscs of aquaculture interest and discuss the bottlenecks, including lack of high-quality reference genomes and the relatively high cost of genotyping, as well as opportunities for applying genomics-based selection.
Citation
Hollenbeck , C M & Johnston , I A 2018 , ' Genomic tools and selective breeding in molluscs ' , Frontiers in Genetics , vol. 9 , 253 . https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2018.00253
Publication
Frontiers in Genetics
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1664-8021Type
Journal item
Rights
© 2018 Hollenbeck and Johnston. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Description
This review of genetic resources and selective breeding in molluscs was carried out as part of the European Marine Biological Research Infrastructure Cluster (EMBRIC) project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 654008.Collections
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