Genetics and Genomics Applied to Aquatic Animal Science

Dear Colleagues,

Aquatic animals play critical roles in global food supply and have become one of the primary sources for human diets. Compared to crops and livestock, the production of aquatic animals is fast-growing due to modern aquaculture and genetic improvement of aquatic animals. Genetic improvement of economic traits via molecular selective breeding has become increasingly important to help meet the rising food demand driven by human population growth. In particular, the genetics and genomics of aquatic animals provide huge opportunities for genetic gains in breeding programmes.

With the continuous advances in sequencing techniques and bioinformatics, genetics and genomics have been widely used in breeding studies of aquatic animals in recent years. For instance, ultra-long reads generated by PacBio or Nanopore sequencing platforms allow us to obtain a large number of genetic variations and candidate functional genes associated with breeding traits. Additionally, with the aid of RNA-seq and whole genome sequencing or resequencing methods, we could accurately evaluate the genetic regulation patterns and genetic backgrounds of aquatic resources.

In this Special Issue, we welcome papers in the field of the genetics and genomics of aquatic animals, such as fish, crustaceans, and turtles, including the identification of candidate functional genes or QTLs related to important traits and genetic resource evaluation with genome-wide markers. Manuscripts focusing on the application of high-throughput sequencing approaches and biotechnological innovations, such as RNA-seq, gene editing, WGS, genome resequencing in genome selection, and BS-seq, will be appreciated.

Dr. Shaokui Yi
Dr. Cong Zeng
Guest Editors

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