Gene Transfer in Red Sea Bream (Pagrosomus Major)

Abstract

Since the first paper reporting gene transfer in goldfish was published 12 years ago (Zhu et al., 1985), significant progress has been made in studies of transgenic fish during the past decade. Several methods of gene transfer applied to more than ten fish species were developed and quite a few kinds of chimeric gene including growth hormone (GH), antifreeze protein (AFP) and various report genes were introduced into fish eggs to gener­ate transgenic fish. The GH gene transgenic salmon with 13 times increase in its body weight was produced by using microinjection (Du et al., 1992) and the AFP gene transgenic goldfish with cold tolerance was generated by oocyte microinjection (Wang et al., 1995). These dramatic successes in transgenic fish study make investigators to be more and more interested in producing superior fish stocks with improved characteristics such as faster growth, freeze and cold tolerance as well as disease resistance.