Advances in molecular technology and their impact on fisheries genetics

Although genetic approaches to questions in fisheries management have been very useful in the past, they have encountered consistent hurdles despite the development of new marker systems. However, recent technological advances in molecular genetics will help to overcome many of these hurdles and are likely to revolutionize fish and fisheries biology. DNA‐sequencing costs have been decreasing exponentially, and recent breakthroughs have led to rapid increase in throughput that allows sequencing the entire expressed genome of a non‐model organism with standard project budgets. Increase in screening throughput and number of available markers, reduction in costs and improved insights into gene function and control of gene expression will allow applications that were impossible until recently. Here, we briefly recount the recent history of fisheries genetics, provide an outlook on near‐term and long‐term developments in genetic technology and consider their applications and implications for fisheries science and education.