Genetically modified Atlantic salmon on US dinner tables.

AquaBounty is developing advanced-hybrid salmon, trout, and tilapia designed to grow faster than traditional fish. AquAdvantage® Salmon (AAS) grows twice as fast as wild Atlantics, reaching market weight in a year and a half instead of three. Mature AAS are indistinguishable from their conventional counterparts. This advancement provides a compelling economic benefit to farmers (reduced growing cycle) as well as enhancing the economic viability of inland operations, thereby diminishing the need for ocean pens. AAS are also reproductively sterile, which eliminates the threat of interbreeding amongst themselves or with native populations, a major recent concern in dealing with fish escaping from salmon farms.

The fish contains a single copy of a DNA sequence that includes code for a Chinook salmon growth hormone and regulatory sequences derived from Chinook salmon and the eel-like ocean pout. Whereas Atlantic salmon normally stop growing in the winter, the GM fish produces growth hormones throughout the year. Developer AquaBounty Technologies, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, has spent more than a decade shepherding the fish towards approval in a new regulatory landscape.

Genomic signature for fish coping with global warming

Cold-water fish such as salmon thrives in temperatures of 50 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit. According to a new study by NRDC and Defenders of Wildlife, global warming is likely to spur the disappearance of trout and salmon from as much as 18 to 38 percent of their current habitat by the year 2090. The study also found that habitat loss for individual species could be as high as 17 percent by 2030, 34 percent by 2060 and 42 percent by 2090 -- if emissions of heat-trapping pollution such as carbon dioxide are not reduced.

Canadian scientists have identified broad genetic signatures that can predict which fish will live or die before spawning a new generation. The study combined radio tracking of fish caught in the ocean and river with a genomic signature based on 32,000 genes in individual fish. Fish captured on the spawning grounds were tracked with tags. Researchers found that 60 per cent of the fish they tracked had genomic signatures predicting their fate. Genomic signatures are essentially responses of the fish's genome — the full array of genes — to a threat, with genes "turned on to guide the physiological and behavioural responses to the threat." The techniques used in the study have major promise as a new tool to guide fish restoration efforts.

This work represents a breakthrough in tracking how salmon are surviving new stresses from global warming. The study published in the January, 2011 edition of the journal Science.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/214.abstract?sid=2a274bc4-b33a-41e8-80e5-17c675485f80