Production of Salinity Tolerant Nile Tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus through Introducing Foreign DNA into Fish Gonads

Y., El-Zaeem; Khouriaba, H.; El-Sherif, M.; Shahin, M.

doi:10.21608/japfp.2014.7430

Production of Salinity Tolerant Nile Tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus through Introducing Foreign DNA into Fish Gonads

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Animal and Fish Production Dept., Faculty of Agriculture, (Saba-Bacha), Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt.

² Animal Production and Fish Resources Dept., Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University, 41522 Ismailia, Egypt

³ Animal Production and Fish Resources Dept., Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University, 41522 Ismailia, Egyp

10.21608/japfp.2014.7430

Abstract

This study was conducted to produce a salinity tolerant Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus through
genetically modified breeding by introducing a fragmented purified DNA isolated from Artemia, Artemia salina into
the gonads. Two groups of adult fish (16 females and 8 males) were chosen to be injected with the foreign DNA into
their gonads using a hypodermic needle with two different concentrations (10 μg and 5 μg /0.1 ml/fish), besides the
control group (4 males and 8 females) carried out. Post-hatching fry which produced from each treatment of DNA were
collected and weighed then transferred separately to glass. Two salinity levels were used to rear the hatching fry during
the present study- 20 ppt (equivalent to half the sea salinity level) and 40 ppt (equivalent to the sea salinity level) -
beside the freshwater as a control. The results showed a significant improvement (P≤0.05) in most of the growth
performance parameters of genetically modified O. niloticus treated with 10 μg of Artemia DNA compared to the
lowest dose of 5 μg of DNA and the control fish reared at 20 ppt of salinity. The results also showed that, the number of
amplified bands detected varied, depending on the primers and DNA treatment. Highly genetic polymorphic percentage
ranged from (8.00 to 71.79%) with an average of 39.05% using different random primers. The results of the present
work suggested that, hyper-saline genetically modified O. niloticus with higher growth rate can be produced using a
feasible and fast methodology.

Keywords