After vigorous growth in several decades, aquaculture industry had reached its milestone in 2014 when the aquaculture contribution to the supply of fish for human consumption overtook that of wild-caught fish for the first time. Fast developing aquaculture provides us potential to feed more than 9 billion people by 2050 in a context of climate change, economic and financial uncertainty, and growing competition for natural resources (FAO, 2016). However, there are still many challenges for fast and sustainable development of aquaculture. These challenges include the lack of genetically improved stocks, various environmental stressors, emerging pathogens and diseases, low feed conversion rate, slow growth, etc. Genetic improvement and germplasm enhancement have been recognized as the fundamental approaches to enhance aquaculture production efficiency, sustainability, product quality and profitability.
Major progress has been made with various molecular genetic tools and breeding schemes in the past decades with the flourishing applications of the next generation of genome sequencing technologies. The genomes of more and more aquaculture species have been sequenced or are being sequenced, which facilitate the fast development of genome-scale technologies and tools. Abundant genomic tools and resources are available for many major aquaculture species, including reference genome sequences and their annotations, genome-wide polymorphic markers and genotyping platforms, high-density and high-resolution linkage maps, and transcriptome resources. Genomic scale fine mapping and genetic regulation of important performance traits, such as disease resistance, growth rate, sexual determination, and tolerance to various environmental stressors, have been studied for better understanding the regulatory mechanisms. Genome information based selective breeding programs have been initiated and are prepared to apply in many key aquaculture species.
The goal of the present Research Topic is to collect contributions of high quality research of aquaculture genetics and genomics and provide a platform to share recent progress on genetic dissection of economically important traits with genome-scale tools and technologies, which are of the most importance for understanding molecular mechanisms and regulations of these important traits and will expedite genetic improvement and germplasm innovation for aquaculture species.
We welcome original research, method and review articles on all types of aquaculture species, including but not limited on finfish, shellfish, shrimps, crabs and algae in marine and fresh water, within the following topics:
1) Genome resources of aquaculture species
2) Development of genome-scale genetic tools
3) Comparative transcriptome and/or methylome analysis
4) GWAS and QTL mapping of important traits
5) Population genetics and germplasm evaluation
6) Acclimation and adaptive mechanisms to environmental stressors
7) Bioinformatics and statistical genetic methods
8) Gene function validation with genome editing technologies
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
After vigorous growth in several decades, aquaculture industry had reached its milestone in 2014 when the aquaculture contribution to the supply of fish for human consumption overtook that of wild-caught fish for the first time. Fast developing aquaculture provides us potential to feed more than 9 billion people by 2050 in a context of climate change, economic and financial uncertainty, and growing competition for natural resources (FAO, 2016). However, there are still many challenges for fast and sustainable development of aquaculture. These challenges include the lack of genetically improved stocks, various environmental stressors, emerging pathogens and diseases, low feed conversion rate, slow growth, etc. Genetic improvement and germplasm enhancement have been recognized as the fundamental approaches to enhance aquaculture production efficiency, sustainability, product quality and profitability.
Major progress has been made with various molecular genetic tools and breeding schemes in the past decades with the flourishing applications of the next generation of genome sequencing technologies. The genomes of more and more aquaculture species have been sequenced or are being sequenced, which facilitate the fast development of genome-scale technologies and tools. Abundant genomic tools and resources are available for many major aquaculture species, including reference genome sequences and their annotations, genome-wide polymorphic markers and genotyping platforms, high-density and high-resolution linkage maps, and transcriptome resources. Genomic scale fine mapping and genetic regulation of important performance traits, such as disease resistance, growth rate, sexual determination, and tolerance to various environmental stressors, have been studied for better understanding the regulatory mechanisms. Genome information based selective breeding programs have been initiated and are prepared to apply in many key aquaculture species.
The goal of the present Research Topic is to collect contributions of high quality research of aquaculture genetics and genomics and provide a platform to share recent progress on genetic dissection of economically important traits with genome-scale tools and technologies, which are of the most importance for understanding molecular mechanisms and regulations of these important traits and will expedite genetic improvement and germplasm innovation for aquaculture species.
We welcome original research, method and review articles on all types of aquaculture species, including but not limited on finfish, shellfish, shrimps, crabs and algae in marine and fresh water, within the following topics:
1) Genome resources of aquaculture species
2) Development of genome-scale genetic tools
3) Comparative transcriptome and/or methylome analysis
4) GWAS and QTL mapping of important traits
5) Population genetics and germplasm evaluation
6) Acclimation and adaptive mechanisms to environmental stressors
7) Bioinformatics and statistical genetic methods
8) Gene function validation with genome editing technologies
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
