Fish genetics experts gather for final conference about four-year project
The final conference of the European AQUA-FAANG project aimed at enhancing genomic selection for fish breeding programmes started today in Edinburgh. It is being held at Edinburgh University’s John McIntyre Conference Centre and presentations are being streamed live.
The first two days of the conference focus on dissemination of the main project results across its various work packages. The final day will centre on stakeholders and provide an overview of the major tools and applications that will impact the aquaculture industry in the short- and long-term future, with talks and perspectives from partners and collaborators in industry.
This morning’s session focuses on improving the functional annotation of farmed fish genomes, and this afternoon’s session looks at the dynamic functional regulation of farmed fish genomes.
The theme for the first session on Thursday is functional genomic basis for immune responses and disease resistance in farmed fish and in the afternoon there is a group discussion on the question “AQUA-FAANG 2.0: what’s next?” Because the session will involve simultaneous discussions among five or six breakout groups, it will not be live streamed.
Industry Day
Friday is the conference’s Industry Day. The first session (9:00-11:10) focuses on AQUA-FAANG’s relevance to industry, and the second will hear perspectives from industry. Speakers include Mark Looseley, of St Andrews-based genetics services company Xelect Ltd, and Adrián Millán from Geneaqua, a spin-off of the University of Santiago de Compostela.
The conference ends with a panel discussion covering the main talking points of day 3 and future perspectives for aquaculture sector.
The four-year AQUA-FAANG project, supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 initiative, involved 25 partners from the UK, Norway, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, and Poland.
It generated extensive new functional genomics datasets in the six main finfish species farmed in European aquaculture: European seabass, gilthead seabream, rainbow trout, Atlantic salmon, common carp, and turbot.
AQUA-FAANG was coordinated by Professor Sigbjørn Lien of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) and Professor Dan Macqueen of the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh University.
