Shrimp farming is a substantial income source in many countries. Farming is well established for some shrimp species, such as Penaeus vannamei (Pacific white shrimp), Macrobrachium rosenbergii (Freshwater shrimp) and Penaeus monodon (Black tiger shrimp).Despite Fenneropenaeus merguiensis (Banana shrimp) being wellknown to consumers, most of this shrimp production is from capture fisheries. This situation has led to overfishing of F. merguiensis, eventually damaging the 'species' genetic diversity and even threatening the extinction of this shrimp.Recently, transplantation technology has been applied successfully to several fish, including Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and tiger puffer (Takifugu rubripes) (Farlora et al., 2014;Okutsu et al., 2007;Yoshikawa et al., 2018). This technique allows the transfer of the spermatogonia of a donor fish that exhibits desirable characteristics into a female recipient. This technology could be helpful in the genetic diversity conservation of F. merguiensis. However, applying this technology, that is, transferring spermatogonia from F. merguiensis to recipients of the same species or other shrimp species that could be good breeding partners, requires the availability of molecular markers that can be used to follow the genetic contributions of the donor in the recipient. VASA (Ddx4) is one of the markers used to detect germ cells in animals. The VASA gene is a member of the DEAD-box family (Asp-Glu-Ala-Asp) of ATP-dependent RNA helicases and is
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