NRSP-8 Aquaculture 2007 Workshop Report
Workshop Organizer: Geoff Waldbieser
Aquaculture Coordinator: John Liu

The 2007 NRSP8 Aquaculture Genome Workshop was held in conjunction with the International Plant and Animal Genome XV Conference in San Diego, CA on January 13-14, 2007. Dr. Geoff Waldbieser of the USDA/ARS Catfish Genetics Research Unit served as the vice-Program Chair and Program Chair-Elect. Due to additional administrative duties, Dr. Dennis Hedgecock (previously elected chair) requested that Dr. Waldbieser organize this year’s meeting. Eighty four participants were recorded over the two day workshop (listed below). The Saturday morning session consisted of three invited speakers followed by a roundtable discussion with the speakers moderated by Dr. Dennis Hedgecock (U. Southern California). After lunch, there were nine contributed oral presentations; four by graduate student/post doc travel award recipients, one by a post-doctoral scientist, and three by primary investigators. The Aquaculture Business Meeting was conducted by Dr. John Liu, followed by a poster session at the Terrace Pavilion that included a reception sponsored by NRSP-8 and Intrinsic Life Sciences.

The invited speakers were Dr. Sergey Nuzhdin, University of California, Davis, Dr. Stuart Macdonald, University of Kansas, and Dr. Eric Schadt, Rosetta Inpharmatics/Merck. This year the emphasis was placed on quantitative phenotypes. Because genomic analyses will be useful in the elucidation of quantitative traits in aquacultured species, the invited speakers were focused on the analysis of complex traits. Drs. Nuzhdin and Macdonald presented analyses of modeling genetic structure in wild populations and modeling complex traits in Drosophila. Dr. Schadt presented research data from human and mouse experiments designed to model complex traits and understand networks of gene expression in response to genetic or environmental perturbations. The interactive roundtable discussion that followed the presentations was useful to help the audience place these concepts in the framework of aquacultured species. The organizers received several compliments on the quality of the morning session from many researchers of non-aquacultured species that attended the workshop.

The NRSP8 Aquaculture Executive Committee approved 10 Travel Awards at $1000 each. One awardee did not attend the conference, so nine travel grants were awarded: four for salmonids, two for catfish, two for sea bream, and one for scallop.

In addition to Travel Award Recipients, the following Graduate Student/Post Docs gave presentations:

Speaker	Species	Laboratory
Krzysztof Lubieniecki	Salmonids	Simon Fraser University, British Columbia
Elizabeth Boulding	Salmonids	University of Guelph, ON, CA
Attila Karsi	Catfish	Mississippi State University
Yniv Palti	Salmonids	USDA-ARS

On Sunday the species coordinators gave presentations on research progress in the past year. Afterward, as hoc species-species research groups assembled to discuss research plans.