DNA extraction from intestinal samples

Version 1

Salmon farming in the future must navigate conflicting and shifting demands of sustainability, shifting feed prices, disease, and product quality. The industry needs to develop a flexible, integrated basis of knowledge for rapid response to new challenges. The Digital Salmon will be an ensemble of mathematical descriptions of salmon physiology, combining mathematics, high-dimensional data analysis, computer science and measurement technology with genomics and experimental biology into a concerted ...

Salmon farmed on modern feeds contains less of the healthy, long-chain fatty acids (EPA and DHA) than before. Up until the turn of the millennium, farmed salmon were fed fish oil as a replacement for their omega-3 rich natural prey. However, fish oil is now a scarce resource, and more than half of the fat in modern feeds comes from plant oils that are inexpensive, but devoid of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. How can we increase the omega-3 content of salmon on sustainable feeds?

One option is ...

Atlantic salmon is a main source of essential ω-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) in many Western diets, especially eicosapentaenoic acid (20:5n-3, EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (22:6n-3, DHA). However, farmed salmon meat now contains less healthy ω-3 fatty acids (FA) than before, due to the shift from marine to vegetable lipid feed sources. An important future aquaculture challenge is therefore to maintain a healthy and high EPA/DHA content when farmed salmon is fed a vegetable ...

This experiment is designed to pinpoint where in the metabolic network there are differences between salmon of different genetic families and on different diets. Analyses of this material will help inform feeding and breeding strategies.

Salmon will be reared on feeds with contrasting levels of very-long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. Then some fish will be crossed over to the other diet while others remain as controls. This perturbation of diet should provoke changes in omega-3 metabolism ...

16S rRNA amplicon sequencing (Illumina MiSeq, V3-V4 region) to assess community structure.