Two new projects to CIGENE

CIGENE has recently received funding for two new projects:

LiceRESIST (Unravelling genetic mechanisms underlying sea lice resistance in salmonid fishes) is funded by the HAVBRUK2 program in The Research Council of Norway. Sigbjørn Lien is leading of the project aiming at characterizing causative genomic differences underlying differences in sea lice susceptibility among seven salmonid species, including functional annotation of the genomic response to sea lice attack, and thereby building a functional genetic understanding of host response and resistance mechanisms. The project will start in August 2020 and run for three years. More information about LiceRESIST can be found here.

Concept illustration of the project LiceRESIST

ImprovAFish (Improving aquaculture sustainability by modulating the feed-microbiomehost axis in Fish) is funded by HAVBRUK2 (Research Council of Norway) and BlueBio Co-Fund (ERA-Net). Simen Rød Sandve and Phillip Pope are main responsible for the project, with main objective to decipher how (or if) the fish the fish genome, the intestinal microbial (meta)genomes and their inherent metabolic processes are holistically connected. We will do this by examining the response of the holobiont (i.e. fish and microbes collectively) to pre-biotic fiber and test if we can exploit these connections to improve the fish growth and health. Planned start date is in July 2020 and the project will run for 3,5 years.

More information about ImprovAFish can be found here.