Duration: January 2025 – December 2028
Project Leader: Jacob Seilø Torgersen, Aquagen
Funding source: Norwegian Research Council
Project number: 355649
Awarded: 10MNOK
Project overview: Sea lice infestation negatively affects animal welfare and is the major challenge for the Norwegian salmon farming industry, prohibiting increased value creation and sustainability. Salmon breeding relies on trait heritability, but it has recently been shown that selective breeding based on inherited sea lice resistance has little potential. For the salmon breeding industry, gene editing holds great promise as an alternative means to produce sea lice-resistant salmon, but this approach faces numerous technological challenges.
The RISE project seeks to take advantage of the natural resistance to sea lice observed in a different species – coho salmon – and transfer the causative genes or expression responses to Atlantic salmon through use of gene editing. The main challenge towards this goal is to identify the best ‘target’ genes for editing. The RISE project will analyse high quality and reliable gene expression networks to narrow down the list of causative genes for editing.
Further, a new in vitro model will be developed to validate gene function and rank target genes for in vivo testing. It is likely that sea lice resistance in coho is a result of increased rather than reduced expression of causative genes. Consequently, resistance in Atlantic salmon is most likely to be achieved through gain of function approaches which must be optimized for efficacy and reduction of mosaicism (generation fish with two or more populations of cells with different genetic makeup). Lines with inserts will still have to be phenotyped in the F1 generation, whereas knockouts can be tested in the founders.
The development of a gene-edited, sea lice-resistant Atlantic salmon is of tremendous importance for sustainable aquaculture practices. Bringing about a gene edited product is challenging but has huge potential in the realization of value creation.
Researchers involved: The project is coordinated by Aquagen, with whom CIGENE has a long-standing collaborative relationship. CIGENE employees active in the project are Sigbjørn Lien, Matthew Peter Kent, Nicola Barson, Prabin Sharma Humagain, and Victor Boyartchuk.