CategoryAgriculture, Aquaculture, Fish Culture, Animal Sciences
KeywordsSpawning, Carp, Aquaculture, Yeast Production, Bioreactors
Current development stageGeneral list: TRL4 Technology validated in lab             

 

 

Collaboration OpportunitySponsored 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