The Pleurogene Project

What they do?

This organization specializes in projects that discover genes. It mostly does this business in Atlantic Canada. However, the organization not only focuses on gene research but how helpful the outcome will be to the society. Their main aim is to discover and identify genes that will help our health care professionals to diagnose and provide treatment for illnesses so as to reduce health care costs and burdens by ensuring the health of the citizens. In addition, they contribute to aqua culture by identifying fish that are healthy so as to raise products that are delicious, sustainable and competitive. They also specialize in reducing the usage of traditional fuels by identifying “green’ fuel producing organisms.

How they do it?

The company uses gene discovery to try and deal with the challenges and potential opportunities in the region. They generally consult with the government and higher institution faculties so as to come up with issues that are pressing. In addition they recruit teams that will work on the research projects and help them to mobilize funds required for the projects. Genome Atlantic receives most of its funding from Industry Canada via Genome Canada. Since the year 2000, a total of $2billion has been contributed towards research.

The organization not only focuses their projects within the region but also in areas that are outside Genome Canada. In collaboration with other parties, Genome has managed to mobilize $70million solely for the Atlantic region research.

Recent developments

The pleurogene project is a project that is aimed to study the genetic make up of two kinds of fish: Senegal Sole and Atlantic halibut. These fish are the main focus because they have the highest market price value and can contribute greatly to aqua culture. Due to the difficulties that emerge when trying to control reproduction when captured, and suboptimal nutrition for the larva, the Senegal sole culture has been seriously impaired especially in countries such as Spain and Europe. Although the Atlantic halibut is advanced, there are still a few improvements to make such as upgrading the resistance of diseases.

There are a number of biological processes that have to be understood when dealing with the two fish species. Some of these processes are related to production and an improved knowledge would easily solve these issues. Some sequences such as their DNA and protein are likely to be similar.

This Genome Canada-Genome España collaborative project started in the summer 2004 and continued for 3 years.

It is a collaboration with Spanish researchers and focuses on the genomics of two flatfish, Senegal sole (Solea senegalensis) and Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus), two flatfish yielding high value market products with the potential for production in aquaculture. Currently, the culture of Senegal sole in Spain and other European countries is seriously impaired primarily because of difficulties in controlling reproduction in captivity and suboptimal larval nutrition. Atlantic halibut aquaculture is somewhat more advanced, with commercial aquaculture production occurring in Norway, Iceland, Scotland and Canada, but there are still improvements to make, particularly with regard to judging when to spawn females, selecting genetically superior broodstock and enhancing disease resistance.

Thus, between these two species, there are a series of production-related problems that would be more easily solved with improved knowledge of several basic biological processes: reproduction, development, nutrition, genetics and immunity. Although the specific aquaculture problems of the two species are different, many of the problems of both species occur in these areas. Because both species are flatfish, they are evolutionary cousins and thus DNA and protein sequences are likely to be similar between them. This means that the efficiency of this research project can be increased by pooling the genomic and experimental data between the two species.