The economical consequences of infectious diseases in aquaculture prompted research groups to
develop efforts in the field of marine mollusk pathology and immunology. To progress in the
characterization of genes that are expressed in Crassostrea gigas hemocytes during a microbial
challenge, we generated expressed sequence tag (EST) from cDNA librairy.

Publication. Title: Immune gene discovery by expressed sequence tags generated from hemocytes of the bacteria-challenge oyster, Crassostrea gigas. Authors: Gueguen Y., Cadoret J-P., Flament D., Barreau-Roumiguière C., Girardot A-L., Garnier J., Hoareau A., Bachère E., Escoubas J-M.

Challenge conditions

Three to four year old oysters (Crassostrea gigas Thunberg) were collected from a commercial farm (Palavas, Gulf of Lion, France) and kept in sea water at 15°C. To minimize individual variability, at least 10 oysters were used in each experimental condition. Oysters were challenged by filing the shell and injecting 100 µl of mixtureof four Vibrio strains into the adductor muscle. After injection, oysters were returned to sea water tanks for 14 hours. Hemolymph from challenged oysters was collected from the pericardial cavity through the adductor muscle. RNA used to construct the cDNA librairy were extracted from hemocytes.

Functional classification of C. gigas hemocyte ESTs