Scientific Reports (Aug 2017)

Generation of Myostatin Gene-Edited Channel Catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) via Zygote Injection of CRISPR/Cas9 System

  • Karim Khalil,
  • Medhat Elayat,
  • Elsayed Khalifa,
  • Samer Daghash,
  • Ahmed Elaswad,
  • Michael Miller,
  • Hisham Abdelrahman,
  • Zhi Ye,
  • Ramjie Odin,
  • David Drescher,
  • Khoi Vo,
  • Kamal Gosh,
  • William Bugg,
  • Dalton Robinson,
  • Rex Dunham

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-07223-7
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

Read online

Abstract The myostatin (MSTN) gene is important because of its role in regulation of skeletal muscle growth in all vertebrates. In this study, CRISPR/Cas9 was utilized to successfully target the channel catfish, Ictalurus punctatus, muscle suppressor gene MSTN. CRISPR/Cas9 induced high rates (88–100%) of mutagenesis in the target protein-encoding sites of MSTN. MSTN-edited fry had more muscle cells (p < 0.001) than controls, and the mean body weight of gene-edited fry increased by 29.7%. The nucleic acid alignment of the mutated sequences against the wild-type sequence revealed multiple insertions and deletions. These results demonstrate that CRISPR/Cas9 is a highly efficient tool for editing the channel catfish genome, and opens ways for facilitating channel catfish genetic enhancement and functional genomics. This approach may produce growth-enhanced channel catfish and increase productivity.