Organization: Department of Ocean Sciences, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), St. John’s, Canada
Dr. Matthew Rise is a Professor with the Department of Ocean Sciences at Memorial University. He started there as the tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Marine Biotechnology from 2006 to 2016. Dr. Rise’s current research program focuses on the use of genomics approaches to advance the understanding of genes and molecular pathways involved in fish growth, development, responses to novel diets, and defense against pathogens and environmental stressors.
Dr. Rise has played key roles in several large-scale aquaculture-related projects. For example, he is the Academic Lead for two Genome Canada funded projects “Biomarker Platform for Commercial Aquaculture Feed Development” and “Integrated Pathogen Management of Co-infection in Atlantic Salmon”. His is also Lead for one of the modules (“Improving Sustainability and Mitigating the Challenges of Aquaculture”) within the Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI), funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF).
In addition, Dr. Rise is an associate editor and the past editor-in-chief of the journal Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part D: Genomics and Proteomics, and he currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals Marine Biotechnology and Developmental and Comparative Immunology. He was also recently appointed to a federal government Independent Expert Panel on Aquaculture Science to provide advice and recommendations to the Minister of Science and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

Title: Advances towards the dietary manipulation of immunity in farmed Atlantic salmon. Part 1: Discovery of diet-responsive immune biomarker genes using functional genomic tools

Speaker: Matthew L. Rise1
Co-authors: Albert Caballero-Solares1, Xi Xue1, Jennifer R. Hall2, Khalil Eslamloo1, Maryam Beheshti Foroutani1, Christopher C. Parrish1and Richard G. Taylor3

Organization: 1Department of Ocean Sciences, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada. 2Aquatic Research Cluster, CREAIT Network, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada. 3 Cargill Animal Nutrition, Minnesota, USA.

Abstract: Salmon aquaculture faces diseases and the need to replace fish meal (FM) and oil (FO) with terrestrial alternatives while maintaining or improving fish health. To study how dietary replacement of FM and FO with animal and plant alternatives influences growth and immunity, a 14-week feeding trial was conducted. Atlantic salmon fed an FM/FO-based diet, and a vegetable meal/oil-based diet had comparable growth performance while feeding an animal by-product meal/vegetable oil-based diet reduced growth. A 44K microarray experiment identified liver transcripts involved in immunity (e.g., mx, mhcI, igd). Singleplex qPCR revealed significant dietary modulation of immune biomarker genes upon challenge with viral mimic pIC. Correlation analyses indicated that dietary omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids influence fish immune response. Also, multiplex qPCR found diet-responsive hepatic transcripts related to oxidative stress and inflammation. The knowledge and tools derived from this research will help in the formulation of superior health-promoting feeds for Atlantic salmon.