Abstract
Abstract The wealth of genetic information that is now available for many agricultural animal species has opened vast potential to apply this new knowledge to improve agricultural production and sustainability. The field, however, is now faced with the daunting task of trying to understand what is arguably the most complex coded system known to mankind. In biomedical model systems, extensive efforts over decades have used single candidate gene approaches to uncover the function of many protein-coding genes and non-coding RNAs, but how this information translates to agricultural animals and their production traits is often unknown. Not only is repeating this vast effort for every agricultural species not practical, the current pace of genomic discovery is woefully inadequate for investigating animal genomes and therefore a radically new approach is needed. Using rainbow trout (RBT, Oncorhynchus mykiss) as a novel agricultural animal experimental system we have initiated a large-scale functional genomics screen that aims to characterize the function of over 1,000 genomic elements in a large animal model. The initial screen will focus on understanding how different genomic elements regulate growth and environmental resilience in these fish by combining multiplex CRISPR genome editing technology and phenotypic screening approaches to identify novel allele combinations from families of edited fish. The research is a paradigm shift in our approach to characterizing gene function, moving away from candidate-based approaches to a more genomics view of gene function. This work will shed light on the complex genetic mechanisms underlying two important production traits in fish while helping to advance our understanding of large animal functional genomics.
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