Genetic manipulation is widely used for the improvement of agricultural organisms.
However, alterations of the genome could also result in unintentional changes, and
could perhaps alter the performance of the organism. Performance traits such as
sensitivity to stressors and to pathogens are strongly influenced by genetic information,
and could therefore be affected by alterations of the genome. In this thesis, I tested the
hypothesis that genetic manipulation alters the stress response and disease resistance
of fish. Specifically, the studies examined the effects of the insertion of a growth
hormone (GH) gene construct and triploidy on coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch).
In this study, the GH transgene did not alter the physiological or cellular stress
responses to a sudden heat shock, relative to those of non-transgenic fish. Exposure of
the diploid fish to a bacterial pathogen (Vibrio anguillarum) appeared to reveal
differences in disease resistance between different transgenic lines. The first filial
generation of GH transgenic fish, which were also a more rapidly growing line,
appeared to be more susceptible to disease relative to non-transgenic fish. The second
filial generation of GH transgenic fish, which were a slower growing transgenic line,
were equally or more resistant than the non-transgenic fish. Disease resistance was
compromised by triploidy, and presence of the GH transgene in triploid fish did not
appear to further modify the triploid's resistance to the pathogen.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/8959 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Jhingan, Esther |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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