The Department of Fisheries explained that the researchers are working on project to reveal important genetic information about the Western Australia’s most valuable aquaculture species – silver lipped pearl oysters, which produce South Sea pearls. This project has duration of three year and will use DNA microarray technology to develop a molecular test to assess the health status of pearl oysters.
This project is said to be funded by the pearling industry and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC), the project will be led by the Department’s Fish Health Unit in collaboration with researchers from the pearling industry and Macquarie University in New South Wales. The principal investigator, Department of Fisheries Senior Fish Pathologist Dr Brian Jones, express that DNA microarray technology could be used to identify stress markers in Pinctada maxima pearl oysters. In turn, this would enable researchers to recognise stress in oysters at a molecular level.
Dr Jones added that this project is likely to generate a large amount of new information about the species, which the project team will enter onto a worldwide database. He further said that putting the DNA sequence material into an international database will mean the information that the scientists unearth cannot be patented and, therefore, will be freely available to scientists and pearling industries worldwide.
