With the increasing demand for high-throughput genotyping in breeding programs, the aquaculture industry is under pressure to find more efficient methodologies. Tissue from finfish is often preserved by placing a small fin clip onto chromatography paper and allowing it to dry. Storing tissue on chromatography paper reduces storage space and material costs compared to the typical method of storing samples in ethanol. Additionally, transportation of samples is simplified by avoiding the use of flammable liquids, and laboratory processing time is reduced because tissue can be quickly taken from chromatography paper using a tissue punch. While this method has proven successful for storing fin clips from finfish, it is unknown whether bivalve tissue stored in a similar manner will retain DNA integrity.
We compared genomic DNA isolated from oyster mantle tissue preserved in ethanol to that isolated from adductor muscle and mantle tissue preserved on chromatography paper. DNA was extracted and purified from all samples using the Kurabo QuickGene DNA tissue kit S (DT-S). The mantle samples on chromatography paper were extracted twice, once using one punch (3mm diameter) of tissue and once using two punches. The mantle samples preserved in ethanol yielded more DNA than the other treatments, but all mantle samples yielded sufficient DNA for common genotyping techniques (SNP arrays, amplicon sequencing, single target PCR) and whole genome sequencing (Table 1). Samples will be genotyped with a 60k SNP array and genotyping success for each treatment will be presented.