Asian Seabass

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According to FAO (2008), the world fisheries production by capture and aquaculture has reached 142 million metric tons which this number shows the increasing of about 26 million metric tons from the fish production in 2007. FAO reported that the scale of fish capturing has reached the maximum level and it was counted that about 77% of the fishing region in the world has now classified as fully exploited. As this scenario might cause the decreasing of new fish sources, the fishing industry will face some problems to fulfill the demand of this protein source around the world (Meryl 2007). As a result, the fisheries industry has now actively develop the aquaculture industry to make sure that the production of this protein source will meet the world demand. In contrast to the production rate in 1970 that recorded about 15.5% of fish production, the percentage is now increasing to 32.4% in 2004 and 36.93% in 2008. This show the encouraging of increasing through the year with average 7.1% per year thus show a good potential to be expanded around the world including Malaysia.

Lates calcarifer or its common local name Asian seabass is commercially important fish in Malaysia as it becomes the most popular protein source in the market. This species is catadromous species which firstly live in fresh water with 10-40m depth (Greenwood 1979) and will migrate to marine water to breed. This species can well breed in the temperature range between 15-28 °C (Moore & Reynolds 1982). In Malaysia, the aquaculture activity for marine fish was started since 1973 and one of the most bred livestock is L. calcarifer. In the beginning of the aquaculture activity, there are some problems occurred that influence the breeding of L. calcarifer livestock incl...

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...racterized. Thus, the characterization of transferrin protein in L. calcarifer will lead to the glycoprotein function identification in fish biology system hence give a picture of this protein’s evolution and distribution through the vertebrate species. In this study, a cDNA sequence encoding the transferrin of the Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer) was identified and analyzed using in silico approaches to predict and characterize its functions. The study of teleost fish proteins is important as there are a very limited number of sequences of this fish available in the database thus limiting the study of this group of fishes. With the ongoing efforts to identify new genes in teleost fish, it is hoped that such study will increase the number of fish genes available in public databases and consequently facilitate the community involved in fish research in their study.

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