National Repository of Fish Cell Lines:A potential fish cell line depository for tomorrow’s cellular agriculture

Abstract

Cell lines developed from various fish organs are largely used as in vitro models in aquatic animal disease surveillance, pharmacology, toxicology and resolving metabolic abnormalities. Cellular agriculture is another promising sector to increase agrarian production through use of cell culture. Recently, in vitro model is also tested for cell-based meat production that may help in reducing the pressure on open water fishing and create a safe and sustainable food industry. Further, the augmented use and development of cell lines open the avenue of establishing cell line depositories, where cells could be deposited, stored/preserved and made available to researchers for further research and applications. The National Repository of Fish Cell Line (NRFC) at ICAR-National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, is a cell line depository that holds the world’s largest collection of fish cell line accessions. This facility holds several fish muscle cell lines too that could be utilized for developing cell-based fish meat in labs. The depository provides easy access of fish cell lines to researchers on demand for various R&D applications, such as disease diagnosis, drug screening, cytotoxicity, cytology, gene expression studies, cell-based meat production etc. This article presents the status, and applications of fish cell lines and summarizes potential, issues and ways forward.