Aquaculture omics: An update on the current status of research and data analysis

Abstract

Aquaculture is the fast-growing agricultural sector and has the ability to meet the growing demand for protein nutritional security for future population. In future aquaculture is going to be the major source of fish proteins as capture fisheries reached at its maximum. However, several challenges need to overcome such as lack of genetically improved strains/varieties, lack of species-specific feed/functional feed, round the year availability of quality fish seed, pollution of ecosystems and increased frequencies of disease occurrence etc. In recent years, the continuous development of high throughput sequencing technology has revolutionized the biological sciences and provided necessary tools. Application of ‘omics’ in aquaculture research have been successfully used to resolve several productive and reproductive issues and thus ensure its sustainability and profitability. To date, high quality draft genomes of over fifty fish species have been generated and successfully used to develop large number of single nucleotide polymorphism markers (SNPs), marker panels and other genomic resources etc in several aquaculture species. Similarly, transcriptome profiling and miRNAs analysis have been used in aquaculture research to identify key transcripts and expression analysis of candidate genes/miRNAs involved in reproduction, immunity, growth, development, stress toxicology and disease. Metagenome analysis emerged as a promising scientific tool to analyze the complex genomes contained within microbial communities. Metagenomics has been successfully used in the aquaculture sector to identify novel and potential pathogens, antibiotic resistance genes, microbial roles in microcosms, microbial communities forming biofloc, probiotics etc. In the current review, we discussed application of high-throughput technologies (NGS) in the aquaculture sector.