SEX DETERMINATION

Sex matters in aquaculture!  In several species of shellfish, including the Pacific oyster and the Manila clam, females grow faster than males.  Growing all-female populations could raise production substantially and would provide another means, in addition to triploidy, of ensuring that farmed stocks could not interact reproductively with wild populations.  These two papers demonstrate our long-standing interest in this topic and advances in our understanding in the genetic mechanisms that determine sex.  In the Pacific oyster, sex is not determined by chromosomes, as in humans and most animals, but by a number of genes that is still being investigated.