Aquaculture continues to grow to meet the consumption of an increasing world population and aquaculture breeding must move quickly to help producers to meet the expectations of consumers and retailers in quality, health and welfare. Genome editing offers the opportunity to make targeted changes in the genetic sequence, introducing variation that will result in rapid and substantial improvements in performance, health and welfare. Such variation exists naturally at low levels in the population, but genome editing allows for the fast and effective introduction of favorable variants into the farmed lines making them better adapted to cultivation in captivity . Where favourable legislation and consumer demand exists, aquaculture breeders seek to identify genes and variation that improve health, welfare and performance, and have the opportunity to employ genome editing to develop strains that facilitate more sustainable production . Traits of interest for which research programs are currently active include disease resistance, growth and yield.
To responsibly introduce animals which are the product of genome editing into commercial productions systems, it is imperative to ensure that the animals in production are infertile. Research is underway to use genome editing to deliver better control of sex and fertility to ensure biological containment of any additional introduced traits and reproductive sterility has several benefits for production on its own . Our work to deliver sterile animals as a product of genome editing at a commercial scale will ensure that additional traits of interest can be introduced into an infertile background
quickly, while simultaneously addressing concerns associated with any risk of unintentional gene flow to wild populations.