Molecular strategy for enhancing the growth and quality fat of food fishes

Fisheries and aquaculture   contribute significantly in nutritional food security and livelihood of community. Food fishes are important dietary source of proteins and long chain Omega-3 highly unsaturated fatty acids, crucial to human health. Fishes are being engineered to increase aquaculture production, for medical and industrial research, and for ornamental reasons. Intra-peritoneal injections of growth promoting hormones and dietary manipulations of lipids precursors   may enhance growth and quality fat of food fishes. But production of these hormones and lipid precursors in large scale is cumbersome and costly. These hormones can be purified after cloning their genes in suitable bacterial expression system or biosynthetic genes of such hormones / quality fats (Omega - 3 fatty acids) can be incorporated into fish genome permanently so that fish grows bigger with better quality fats. Accordingly, genes cloning and expression of growth regulatory hormones (like GH, IGF and Leptin) and quality fats synthesizing enzymes after hooking them with strong Beta actin promoter may be a better molecular approach for integrating them stably in fish by electroporation/ nanotechnology. Strategy presentation of molecular work from this lab may help in developing international capacity to increase the productivity and quality fats of food fishes in future.