Great scallop myostatin--the role as a negative muscle growthregulator also in invertebrates?

摘要

Cultivation of scallop has received much attention because of the increasing demand for high quality seafood products at the European market. The highly favorable conditions for growing the great scallop, Pecten maximus, along the Norwegian coastline give a unique opportunity to become a leading nation for scallop production. This project is focusing on the environmental and genetic regulation of the larval growth and development of the large adductor muscle, which is the primary product sold. The muscle fiber anatomy and recruitment in molluscs have been studied for the first time. Water temperatures of 14 degree C or 18 degree C at early developmental stages were shown to influence larval growth and survival. Genes encoding contractile proteins and regulatory factors have been partially isolated, including the negative muscle growth regulator myostatin. Great scallop myostatin showed about 50% sequence similarity to fish and mammalian myostatin in the active C-terminal portion. The construction of an EST-library from the scallop adductor muscle is in progress to reveal the full-length cDNA sequences of additional muscle regulatory genes. In situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry will then be used to study the sub-cellular location of the gene products during growth and recruitment of the muscle cells.