2010/767 Prevention and control of maturation to address multiple key abalone production constraints

By Natasha Botwright

The aim of this project was to generate a foundation of knowledge to support the development of interventional methods to prevent or promote conditioning and spawning in abalone. The ability to prevent maturation will provide the Australian temperate abalone industry with a competitive edge by reducing mortality, increasing growth and improving delivery of live product to market. Controlling maturation will assist in breeding. The key to achieving these outcomes is to first gain an understanding of the maturation process at the molecular level. This will provide the knowledge to initiate development of new technologies and/or interventional strategies to address these key industry issues.

Key to this project was the development of significant abalone sequence resources. Consolidation of these with previously publically available genome resources to develop the molluscan theoretical protein database improved the identification success up to four fold. Sample collection, extraction and mass spectroscopy methodologies in combination with the novel pipeline developed specifically for this project enabled the core focus to be only on those peptides suspected to be involved in the gonad maturation process.

This project highlighted both the lack of genetic knowledge available for abalone species and the difficulty in determining gene and protein interaction networks in invertebrate species. Knowledge of the sequence of active biological maturation related peptides provides the opportunity to conduct functional studies to progress towards an interventional strategy to promote or inhibit gonad condition as required in commercial or breeding stock.