China has achieved great progress in its prawn genome study, which it began early this year,according to latest issue of Beijing Review.

  “This is one of the very few genome studies on marine organism following the human genome project and terrestrial animal and plant genome studies. It also shows that China’s marine organism studies have entered genetic era,” said Xiang Jianhai, a Chinese expert on marine organism studies, at the international symposium on genome and biological technology studies.

   Prawns are the world’s major aquatic organisms. However, in recent years, serious problems have appeared in global prawn aquiculture, including serious diseases, a worsening quality and weakened resistance to diseases. To discover pathogenic genes, the institute of marine studies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) cooperated with the genome information center of CAS to test Expression Sequence Tags (ESTs).

   Scientists found 10,000 ESTs and sorted out more than 3,000 new prawn sequences. Prior to this, there were less than 3,000 published prawn ESTs. “These new genomes may be directly related to the growth rate of prawns, their resistance to diseases and sex control,” said Xiang. Previously, academician Xu Xun, a Chinese scientist, had taken the lead in decoding the genetic code of prawn diseases. The prawn gene sequence recently discovered by Chinese scientists has been registered in international data. “These research results bring China into the lead in the international study of prawn genomes,” said Xiang.

   Genome studies on five marine organisms, including prawns, oysters and African carp, have now been listed in global aquatic animal genome plans.