| Category | Agriculture, Aquaculture, Fish Culture, Animal Sciences |
| Keywords | Spawning, Carp, Aquaculture, Yeast Production, Bioreactors |
| Current development stage | General list: TRL4 Technology validated in lab
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| Collaboration Opportunity | Sponsored Research with an option to License Research Results |
Background
- Cyprinid are a family of fresh water fish including ornamental goldfish, koi, and the common carp, which is the most widely produced fish in the aquaculture industry worldwide
- Carp represents 40% of the world aquaculture production of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks
- In 2015, global culture carp production reached 28.8 million tonnes, with more than 20 million tonnes produced in China (link)
- According to FAO projections, it is estimated that to maintain the current level of per capita consumption, global aquaculture production will need to reach 80 million tonnes by 2050
- Induced spawning in cyprinid fish has traditionally been carried out by a carp pituitary extract (CPE) containing a predetermined dose of gonadotropin hormones (GtH)
- Increasing demand for cyprinids has led to a shortfall in the supply of pituitaries, as such there is a shortage of pituitaries and CPE
- P. pastoris yeast enables abundant production of LH recombinant protein
- Yeast in bioreactors is routinely used in various industries for producing proteins
Our Innovation
By using yeast in bioreactors, we demonstrated a new method for producing the cyprinid spawning agent. This agent, luteinizing hormone (LH), is a recombinant and biologically active single-chain polypeptide that can be produced easily in abundance.
- A simple production method efficient during most of the year
- Enables abundant spawning and production of both male and female fish
Our Technology
Preliminary experiments show that optimal concentrations of recombinant LH (rcLHβα) would be above 350 ug/kg to induce spawning.
Table: Female body weight, oocyte diameter and latency period are expressed as mean ± SEM.
1 Mean±SEM of female’s body weight (g) in experiment group.
2 Mean±SEM of oocyte diameter (µm) in experiment group.
3 Latency periods: the interval between resolving injection and spawning in hr.
4 Spawning success (%): the number of females which ovulated after injection divided by the total number of injected females.
5 Fertilization (%): the number of eggs that were fertilized divided by the total number of eggs sampled.
Opportunity
Seeking funding and industrial cooperation to further conduct research
