Regulation and expression of transgenes in fish—a review

Abstract

Transgenic fish, owing to a number of advantages which they offer over other species, are proving to be valuable model systems for the study of gene regulation and development genetics in addition to being useful targets for the genetic manipulation of commercially important traits. Despite having begun only a decade ago, the production of transgenic fish has become commonplace in a number of laboratories world-wide and considerable progress has been made. In this review, we initially consider the various regulatory elements and coding genes which have been used in fish, and subsequently discuss and compare both the transient and long-term fate and expression patterns of injected DNA sequences in the context of the different factors which are likely to have an effect on the expression of transgenes.

Transcriptional activities in the pituitaries of channel catfish before and after induced ovulation by injection of carp pituitary extract as revealed by expressed sequence tag analysis

“…Although the channel catfish GH gene was cloned several years ago (Tang et al 1993), its cDNA has not yet been isolated. Thus the availability of the cDNA clones will be useful for construction of expression vectors used for production of transgenic fish for enhancing growth (for review, see Hackett 1993, Iyengar et al 1996. Channel catfish prolactin has not been reported.…”

Development of a positive–negative selection procedure for gene targeting in fish cells

“…In most cases, the firstgeneration transgenic fish were highly mosaic for the introduced gene. Desired integration of the transgene and its proper expression is rarely achieved (for review see Iyengar et al, 1996). Transgenic fish research urgently requires development of a novel gene transfer approach for achieving site-directed integration of a transgene into the host genome and regulation of the expression of transgenes.…”

Gene structure and promoter function of a teleost ribosomal protein: a tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus) L18 gene

“…In addition, the unacceptability to the food market of transgenic ¢sh containing heterologous sequences leads to a demand for new ¢sh promoters [26]. We present a new, strong ¢sh promoter that can be used to drive ubiquitous expression of a gene of interest.…”