ABSTRACT
Dunaliella, a unicellular green alga, offers enormous potential benefits to the commercial mariculture industry. Tolerant of very wide ranges of temperature, salinity and pH, this organism accumulates high levels of nutrients such as β-carotenoids, making it a favorable source of live feed. Advances in the genetics and transformation of Dunaliella with foreign genes are relatively recent and much remains to be understood. In this chapter, the prospects for using Dunaliella as a tool for paratransgenic control of infectious diseases of farmed shrimp are discussed. Paratransgenesis is a strategy that employs commensal or symbiotic organisms to express molecules that interfere with transmission cycles of infectious pathogens. Application of paratransgenesis to viral and bacterial diseases of farmed shrimp has been described with genetically modified cyanobacteria as the delivery agents. Here, a transformation system for Dunaliella and a framework for application of engineered Dunaliella in commercial mariculture are presented.
