EST-based identification of genes expressed in the liver of adult seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax, L.) Valentina Chini, Simona Rimoldi, Genciana Terova, Marco Saroglia, Federica Rossi, Giovanni Bernardini, Rosalba Gornati ⁎ Dipartimento di Biotecnologie e Scienze Molecolari, Università dell'Insubria, 3 Via Dunant, I-21100 Varese, Italy Received 21 July 2005; received in revised form 11 November 2005; accepted 14 February 2006 Available online 17 April 2006 Received by S. Kumar Abstract The scarcity of the genomic resources for some fish species, in spite of their commercial interest, could retard the positive effects that modern biotechnology can offer to aquaculture industry. Then an effort should be made to reduce, as far as it concerns genomic resources, the gap that separates farming species from “model organisms”. In this paper, we present an EST project in which we performed single pass sequencing on 1229 randomly selected clones from a sea bass cDNA library. The sequences are deposited in the NCBI database with the following accession numbers: from CV186018–CV186299, from CX535494–CX535707, from DN832024–DN832270 and from DV216775–DV217260. EST cataloguing and profiling of seabass will set the basis for functional genomic research in this species, but will also serve for comparative and environmental genomics, for the identification of polymorphic markers useful, for example, to survey the disease resistance of fish, for the discovery of new molecular markers of exposure and for the production of micro- and macro-arrays. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: cDNA library; Biotechnology; Genomic resources; Aquaculture industry 1. Introduction The decline of ocean fisheries stocks has provided a rapid growth in fish farming (Naylor et al., 2000) that, thanks to modern technologies, has improved production and quality and, at the same time, reduced the environmental impact with benefits on the public perception of the aquaculture industry (Huntingford, 2002; Kristiansen and Juell, 2002). The increas- ing pressure in the field of aquaculture has determined the necessity to adopt the most recent techniques of molecular biology that, integrated with the classic methodologies, could augment the overall efficiency of the industry. Functional genomic, for instance, can offer precise information on the actual genes responsible for growth, disease resistance, flesh quality, health conditions, welfare and other attributes (Gornati et al., 2005). We are, therefore, certain that the new molecular techniques will find their place in the everyday management of fish farming, but we are also aware that the scarcity of the genomic resources for some fish species, in spite of their commercial interest, will retard the positive effects that modern biotechnology can offer to aquaculture industry. We are convinced that an effort should be made to reduce, as far as it concerns genomic resources, the gap that separates farming species from “model organisms”. For this reason in this paper, we present an EST project on sea bass, a fish species of great economical interest in the Mediterranean area. EST cataloguing and profiling of sea bass will set the basis for functional genomic research in this species, for comparative and environmental genomics, for the identification of polymorphic markers, for the discovery of new molecular markers of exposure and for the production of micro- and macro-arrays. Gene 376 (2006) 102 – 106 www.elsevier.com/locate/gene Abbreviations: EST, expressed sequence tag; mRNA, messenger RNA; E- value, expectation value; PCR, polymerase chain reaction; dNTP, deoxyri- bonucleoside triphosphate; cDNA, complementary to RNA; T m , melting temperature; bp, base pairs. ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0332421444; fax: +39 0332421500. E-mail address: rosalba.gornati@uninsubria.it (R. Gornati). 0378-1119/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.gene.2006.02.010