Construction Of Antarctic Notothenioid Fishes Dissostichus Mawsoni BAC Library

Antarctic notothenioidei fish thrive in constantantly ice-laden Antarctic environment(-1.9 )0 Many fish species of this suborder evolved in situ in the freezing and isolated seewaters during the cooling of the Antarctic Ocean in the past 30 mys (million years). These species are regarded as living fossiles for studying the molecular evolution and cold adaption under the extreme environmental conditionscTo facilitate in-depth studies in molecular and genomic evolution in the polar environment, a bacterial artificial chromosome(BAC) library was constructed with large-insert genomic DNA fragments from blood cells of antarctic notothenioid fish, Dissostichus mawsoni. A total of 66,586 clones were obtained with an average insert size around 160 kb, ranging from 40 to 280 kb. These clones therefore represented 3.55 folds of D. mawsoni haploid genome. The library will be used for characterizing the genes involved in cold tolerance, as well as the evolutionary mechanisms that shaped the genomes of these fishes in the extremely cold marine environment.