Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: RENATA LILIAN DANTAS CAVALCANTE

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : RENATA LILIAN DANTAS CAVALCANTE
DATE: 31/03/2022
TIME: 08:30
LOCAL: Google Meet
TITLE:

Prospective Genes with Biotechnological Potential for Fish Farming in the Amazon Region

KEY WORDS:

Amazon fishes; Genomics; Phylogenomics;

PAGES: 36
BIG AREA: Ciências Biológicas
AREA: Biologia Geral
SUMMARY:

The Amazon basin, with its great biodiversity, is home to about 15% of the world’s freshwater fish species. Because of the environmental conditions of this area, fishing exploitation is among the main socio-economic activities of the region. Among the species of economic interest are two giants endemic to the rivers of the region: Brachyplatystoma filamentosum (order: Siluriformes) known as Piraíba or Filhote, and Arapaima gigas (order: Osteoglossiformes) known as Pirarucu. Its unique size attracts great economic interest for the development of the region, but studies in the molecular context relative to these features of interest, such as gigantism and the mechanism of sexual differentiation, are still little known. However, the availability of genomics and transcriptomics data of some species of the same taxonomic group deposited in public biological data repositories such as NCBI, allows studies that aim to find associated genomic regions that are of interest for the improvement of their management, production, and conservation. This work, proposes to mine data present in several public databases, using a method with genomics and phylogenetic approaches, in order to identify genes with biotechnological potential, related both to improvements in fisheries production and to the conscious preservation and management of the fish species in question. For this, we are developing 3 different research strategies using the fish data deposited in public banks. I) Improve the assemblies of A. gigas by assembling a hybrid assembly with the union of genomic data published by different study groups; II) Look for potential genomic regions linked to sex by identifying specific haplotypes genomic regions in Scleropages formosus, which is a species close to A. gigas. And finally, III) analyze the mitochondrial DNA data of 137 Siluriformes deposited in the NCBI, plus the Filhote mtDNA and 10 outgroups to perform a phylogenetic analysis with the aid of the BEAST tool. For the assembly of A. gigas, we obtained the generation of 3,975 scaffolds for reads only of females, 1,473 scaffolds for males, and 2,258 scaffolds for all reads, which were shown a smaller number of scaffolds when compared to previous studies. The total size of the new assemblies was 667 Mb, 677 Mb, and 692 Mb for females, males, and all reads, respectively, which resulted in a greater difference between the specific sex assembly when compared to previous works. In the analysis of haplotype-specific regions of Scleropages formosus, we found genes that could be involved in the biological process related to the sex determination mechanism, such as the Homeobox group (embryogenesis), SPDYA (meiotic cell cycle in the male germline), and 7 ovarian-like (present in the embryonic and adult stages of Zebrafish), all on chromosome 1 of Arowana. This study has to expand the knowledge of the genetics of endemic fish of the Amazon basin, besides bringing more scientific knowledge, with the identification of genes related to gigantism among the fish of the order Siluriformes and the genus Arapaima. And this can make possible the commercial improvement of these organisms from this morphological characteristic of the species itself.

BANKING MEMBERS:
Presidente - 3063244 - TETSU SAKAMOTO
Interno - 2170415 - Jorge Estefano de Santana Souza
Externo à Instituição - SIDNEY EMANUEL BATISTA DOS SANTOS - UFPA