A JOURNEY FROM PURE RESEARCH TO BUSINESS BIOTECH

AQUA Bounty was formed in 1994, but in reality its foundations were laid about two decades earlier, when work on an unusual group of proteins was first started at the Ocean Sciences Centre (OSC) of Memorial University at Logy Bay (pictured at right).

Dr. Garth Fletcher, a Professor at the OSC, is also the President of AQUABounty Canada. He studied physiology in British Columbia, then in California and Nova Scotia, and in 1971 he came to Newfoundland to carry out research on fish at the OSC. He was struck by the sight of the sea in winter, covered in ice and with water temperatures down as low as -1.8°C. Dr. Fletcher knew that most fish freeze at about -0.7°C, but that some species of fish living in very cold waters near the South Pole are able to produce proteins, called antifreeze proteins, that lower their freezing points and keep them from freezing in winter. He decided to focus his research on the mechanisms of freeze protection developed by marine fish living in Northern waters, and he began his research on antifreeze production in the winter flounder (Pleuronectes americanus).

In 1974, Dr. Choy Hew, a protein biochemist, came to Newfoundland to work on insulin production in Atlantic cod. Dr. Hew was too late in the season to get his cod fish from the Newfoundland inshore fishery, so he got some shipped up from Nova Scotia. His fish duly arrived and were put into a big raceway tank with Dr. Fletcher's winter flounders. All went well until mid-winter when water temperatures in the tank fell to almost -1.8°C. At this temperature, sea water freezes and surface ice begins to form. If snow falls into the sea water, it doesn't melt but hangs in the water like cotton wool. (NOTE: while fresh water freezes at 0°C, sea water does not freeze until its temperature drops to about -1.8°C. This is due to the high concentration of salts dissolved in seawater - the more salt, the lower the freezing point. )

One particularly cold morning, Dr. Fletcher and Dr. Hew went down to the tank room to check on their fish and they got a shock. All the flounder were swimming happily in the icy cold water, but all Dr. Hew's cod fish had died, apparently frozen to death. "Why has this happened?" Dr. Hew asked, only to be reminded that the winter flounder were protected by their antifreeze proteins while it seemed that the cod were not. Dr. Hew was fascinated, and that morning Drs. Hew and Fletcher formed a scientific partnership that would use their combined skills in the fields of physiology, protein chemistry and molecular biology to gain a full understanding of how the antifreeze proteins are made and how they protect fish in cold environments. This partnership, forged in adversity in the 1970s, is still going strong today.

However, the research on antifreeze proteins took an unexpected twist in the early 1980s. Dr. Arnold Sutterlin, also working at the Ocean Sciences Centre, was lamenting the inability of Atlantic salmon to survive the winter in most potential aquaculture sites along the coast of Newfoundland due to the low temperatures and prevalence of ice.

By this time, Drs. Hew and Fletcher, together with Dr. Peter Davies at Queens University had discovered a significant amount about the genes involved in the production of antifreeze in the winter flounder. The thought occurred to them that if you could transfer the antifreeze protein gene from the winter flounder into the genome of the Atlantic salmon, freeze protected salmon might be the result.

The idea took shape, the gene construct was produced, and copies of the gene were microinjected into many salmon eggs through the natural point of entry of the sperm into the egg - the micropyle.

Many salmon fry were grown up, and some of them were found to contain the antifreeze protein gene. Those fish containing the gene were bred from, to produce lines of salmon capable of producing antifreeze. Subsequent generations produced from these antifreeze-producing founder fish are still at the Ocean Sciences Centre. They do not produce enough antifreeze to protect them sufficiently in Newfoundland winter waters (although the availability of new antifreeze genes producing more active proteins linked to stronger promoters are resulting in the reactivation of this line of study).

The ability of the transgenic salmon to produce small quantities of antifreeze was sufficiently encouraging to the scientists for the work to be expanded to include other commercially important traits. To the food production industry, rapid growth is probably one of the most interesting traits. Thus, the next endeavour was to produce rapidly growing salmon.

Details of the Science involved in the production of rapidly growing salmon can be found in the references on the Research/Articles page, and, in the coming weeks, the pages on this site will be updated to provide more information.

If you have any specific questions, contact us, and we will try to answer them.

Links

Dr. Garth L. Fletcher

Dr. Choy L. Hew

Dr. Peter Davies

Ocean Sciences Centre