Accurate, non-destructive, and high-throughput age estimation for Golden perch (Macquaria ambigua spp.) using DNA methylation
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Espinoza, Tom
Crook, David A
Anderson, Chloe
Korbie, Darren
Marshall, Jonathan C
Kennard, Mark J
Harding, Doug J
Butler, Gavin L
Roberts, Brien
Whiley, Josh
Marshall, Sharon
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Abstract
Age structure information of animal populations is fundamental to their conservation and management. In fisheries, age is routinely obtained by counting daily or annual increments in calcified structures (e.g., otoliths) which requires lethal sampling. Recently, DNA methylation has been shown to estimate age using DNA extracted from fin tissue without the need to kill the fish. In this study we used conserved known age-associated sites from the zebrafish (Danio rerio) genome to predict the age of golden perch (Macquaria ambigua), a large-bodied native fish from eastern Australia. Individuals aged using validated otolith techniques from across the species’ distribution were used to calibrate three epigenetic clocks. One clock was calibrated using daily (daily clock) and another with annual (annual clock) otolith increment counts, respectively. A third used both daily and annual increments (universal clock). We found a high correlation between the otolith and epigenetic age (Pearson correlation > 0.94) across all clocks. The median absolute error was 2.4 days in the daily clock, 184.6 days in the annual clock, and 74.5 days in the universal clock. Our study demonstrates the emerging utility of epigenetic clocks as non-lethal and high-throughput tools for obtaining age estimates to support the management of fish populations and fisheries.
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Scientific Reports
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13
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© Crown 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Ecology
Conservation and biodiversity
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Mayne, B; Espinoza, T; Crook, DA; Anderson, C; Korbie, D; Marshall, JC; Kennard, MJ; Harding, DJ; Butler, GL; Roberts, B; Whiley, J; Marshall, S, Accurate, non-destructive, and high-throughput age estimation for Golden perch (Macquaria ambigua spp.) using DNA methylation, Scientific Reports, 2023, 13, pp. 9547