A fundamental aspect of NOAA’s mission revolves around one simple word: Fish.
NOAA Fisheries manages U.S. fisheries nationwide. To do that, fisheries scientists need tools that can help them assess the health of fish stocks. Understanding the age distribution of fish within a population is essential for evaluating the health, growth rates, and sustainability of a stock. Marine biologists use this data to calculate how fast a fish population reproduces, how long individual fish live, and how much fishing pressure the stock can safely handle.
NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) is one of the NOAA science centers that studies the abundance, health, biology, and population dynamics of fish species to provide advice on sustainable harvests and prevent overfishing. Recently, NEFSC entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the biotechnology company Daicel Chiral Technologies to evaluate a new method for estimating the age structure of a fish stock that will make the process quicker and more efficient.
Existing methods for determining the age of a fish rely on physically examining individual scales, vertebrae, and spines: a tedious task requiring hours of collecting and processing samples.
To accelerate the analytical process, NEFSC will evaluate a technique developed by Daicel Chiral Technologies that zeros in on the composition of amino acids, small molecules that are fundamental building blocks of proteins, within the fish eye lens core. As a fish ages, these amino acids spontaneously flip from their active biological form into a mirror-image form. Because this conversion happens at a predictable rate over time, scientists can use it as a dating technique to determine the age of a fish.
Standard laboratory methods cannot distinguish between these mirror-image molecules because most of their physical characteristics are identical. To unmask the two forms, Daicel Chiral has created a light-absorbing chemical “tag” that attaches to amino acids, allowing scientists to differentiate between the two forms. They can then calculate a fish’s age based on the ratio of newly formed to original molecules.
“The CRADA offers a unique opportunity to test the utility of a new technology in estimating fish age, “ says Ashok Deshpande, a research chemist within NEFSC and lead NOAA investigator on the CRADA. “Daicel recently introduced a unique tool for analyzing amino acids that promises to significantly speed up the age estimation process.”
Daicel Chiral Technologies is a biomedical research company that works with life science organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and researchers worldwide. A leading source of the amino acid analysis at the core of the CRADA, they bring deep knowledge and expertise to the partnership.
“This collaboration is an exciting opportunity to turn research into a practical tool for fisheries science,” said Weston Umstead, Director of Operations and Development at Daicel Chiral Technologies. “By using Vaast [their new chemical “tag”], a technology that helps scientists separate and quantify D and L amino acids in a single analytical workflow to help make fish age analysis faster and more efficient, we hope to support better understanding and management of fish populations. Just as importantly, studying amino acid biomarkers in fish eyes could provide a model for how this approach might be applied to other biological questions in the future.”
NOAA regularly partners with private sector companies through CRADAs to conduct research and development work that is mutually beneficial and helps to accomplish NOAA’s mission. NOAA CRADAs are coordinated through NOAA’s Technology Partnerships Office.