= SturSNiP: Discovery and Characterisation of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) Markers for Sturgeon Product Traceability(December 2011

This report describes the implementation and outcomes of SturSNiP, a JRC-funded research project to develop genetic resources for selected sturgeon species. The research is directed towards applications of conservation management, product traceability and forensic analysis for law enforcement. Sturgeons belonging to the genus Acipenser represent 17 of the 25 caviar-producing species of fish and have been subjected to long-term over-exploitation that has led to the collapse of natural populations and the subsequent legal protection of wild fish and fish products. A lack of knowledge regarding many fundamental biological questions pertaining to taxonomy, population structure and genetic diversity hampers our ability to effectively conserve remaining wild stocks. At the same time, product traceability and the enforcement of trade regulations governing sturgeon are complicated by an inability to accurately and robustly identify caviar in trade. The overall aim of SturSNiP is to support both conservation and enforcement through the development of DNA tests to address such issues in Russian, Siberian, Persian and Adriatic sturgeon. DNA testing is based on the development and characterisation of markers distributed throughout the genome. The research objectives of SturSNiP were to generate large quantities of genetic data for each species and subsequently discovery genetic markers relevant to the biological questions at hand. This was performed using a novel technique known as RAD sequencing to specifically isolate SNP markers that are informative for the purposes of species identification, population assignment and broodstock traceability. The key scientific results were as follows: A total of 144 million high quality 100-base-pair DNA sequences were produced from thirteen separate genomic libraries (14.4 Gb). Bioinformatic analysis of the data yielded panels of candidate SNP markers that showed variation among species, populations and individuals, indicating the successful implementation of the chosen method. Initial work to experimentally validate species-informative SNP markers confirmed their existence and demonstrated the feasibility of developing simple DNA tests for the identification of sturgeon. The success of the data production phase of the project meant that more DNA sequence data was generated than initially anticipated, leading to an extension of the project and the isolation of additional candidate markers. The scientific goals of the project were limited to early-phase research in the development of DNA tests for application to management, control and enforcement. However, SturSNiP has paved the way for further work and routes for exploitation of the data in an applied context are presented and discussed in this report.