Molecular breeding lab of biotechnology research center (BRC) is to develop superior strains of
aquaculture organisms (olive flounder, Pacific abalone, Pacific oyster and Chinese white shrimp)
as a new approach to genetic improvement of aquaculture organisms for economically important
quantitative traits, particularly growth and disease tolerance.

The general objective of our lab is to determine the linkage of molecular markers to quantitative
trait loci (QTL) associated with growth and/or disease tolerance.

We have developed markers amplified fragment length polymorphic (AFLP) markers, polymorphic
expressed sequence tag (EST) markers, microsatellites or simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers,
and single nucleotide polymorphic (SNP) markers for applications in various aquaculture species,
especially in olive flounder. For olive flounder, we have developed over 200 AFLP markers and
several hundreds of microsatellite markers. We have thoroughly evaluated the usefulness,
inheritance, and adaptability of microsatellite markers in olive flounder. Recently, our center
has developed the microsatellite marker containing cDNA clones in olive flounder. In our EST
work, we have identified 230 EST clones (about 6% of sequenced clones) with microsatellites.
We will be using these type I markers for genetic linkage mapping.

We have mapped 149 microsatellite markers and constructed the genetic linkage map in olive
flounder that include 23 linkage groups with an average intermarker spacing of 4.4 cM. We will be
genotyping over 100 microsatellite markers and analyzing the linkage.

Hereafter we will be developing the SNP markers from EST database for genetic mapping and
selective breeding. We will determine the genes controlling growth rate and disease resistance and map their chromosomal locations. We will use various genetic markers for fine mapping of QTLs.