African Journal of
Biotechnology

  • Abbreviation: Afr. J. Biotechnol.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1684-5315
  • DOI: 10.5897/AJB
  • Start Year: 2002
  • Published Articles: 12486

Full Length Research Paper

Production of salinity tolerant Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus through traditional and modern breeding methods: II. Application of genetically modified breeding by introducing foreign DNA into fish gonads

Samy Yehya El-Zaeem1,2*, Mohamed Morsi M. Ahmed3,4, Mohamed El-Sayed Salama1 and Hamad Abdel-Razek El-Maremie5
  1Animal and Fish Production Department, Faculty of Agriculture, (Saba-Bacha), Alexandria   University, Alexandria, Egypt. 2 Al-Jeraisy Chair for DNA Research, Zoology Department, Faculty of Science, P.O. Box 2455, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia. 3 Nucleic Acid Research Department, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Research Institute (GEBRI), Mubarak City for Scientific Research & Technology Applications, Alexandria, Egypt. 4Biological Sciences Department, Faculty of Sciences, P.O Box 80203, King Abdul-Aziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia. 5Animal Production Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Omar Almokhtar University, Al-Bayda, Libya.
Email: [email protected], [email protected]

  •  Accepted: 02 December 2010
  •  Published: 24 January 2011

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 sea bream, Sparus aurata or Artemia, Artemia salina into the gonads. The results showed a significant improvement (P ≤ 0.05) in most of the growth performance and feed utilization parameters of genetically modified O. niloticus treated with sea bream-DNA and reared at different salinity levels up to 16 ppt compared to both genetically modified O. niloticus treated with Artemia-DNA and the control fish reared at the same salinity levels. Genetically modified O. niloticus treated with Artemia-DNA reared at 32 ppt, had displayed better traits results (P≤ 0.05) compared to the other fish within the same salinity level. Furthermore, genetically modified O. niloticus treated with sea bream-DNA showed a silver color covering all the body  and no dark vertical bands. The results of the random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) fingerprinting showed highly genetic polymorphic percentage (35.95%) among fish receiving foreign DNA and their control 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.

 

Key words: Salinity tolerance, Oreochromis niloticus, productive performance, genetically modified, DNA transfer.