Full Transcript

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Marta Gómez-Chiarri I always like working on organisms I can eat. I love oysters. Even if they are not a very charismatic species.

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Melissa Hoffman This is Dr. Marta Gomez-Chiarri, a professor at the University of Rhode Island who studies diseases in aquatic organisms. Her focus at the moment is on oysters. In Rhode Island, there are over 50 oyster aquaculture farms, and oysters are a staple at seafood restaurants across the state. *Oyster shucking sound*

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Melissa Hoffman One major challenge facing oyster aquaculture is disease outbreaks. Marta and a team of scientists wanted to look more closely at why oysters are susceptible to certain diseases.

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Marta Gómez-Chiarri So the reason we were really interested in sequencing the genome is that we know that there's many differences between oyster strains on their ability to resist environmental stress, to resist diseases, or to grow. But selective breeding is a process that takes a long time. And by sequencing the genome, the community was trying to figure out a way to accelerate that process of selective breeding by using the genome to find the genes that code for most important traits.

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Melissa Hoffman To back up a bit, a genome is an organisms complete set of DNA. In other words, all of the information needed to make an oyster an oyster. This includes genetic information about how oysters respond to diseases. Now, Marta and her students are at a point where they can mine the genome data using bioinformatic computer tools. *Typing sounds*

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Marta Gómez-Chiarri We can now investigate what are the aspects of the oyster genome that are involved into traits of commercial interest. We also care about oyster because they can transmit some pathogens. So, maybe we can figure out about oysters that have the ability to clear those pathogens faster. And I think that's really exciting, but at the same time it's very challenging and we need to develop new tools to be able to answer those questions.

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