Organization: Department of Ocean Sciences, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), St. John’s, Canada

Umasuthan is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Ocean Science Centre (OSC), MUN.

Umasuthan earned his B.Sc. in biochemistry and molecular biology from University of Colombo (Sri Lanka) and both M.Sc and Ph.D in marine life sciences from the Jeju National University (South Korea).

He was a post-doctoral researcher at Jeju National University for one year (2014-2015). He then received a fellowship from Japanese Society for the Advancement of Science (JSPS) to conduct research at Nihon University (Japan) for 18 months prior to joining Professor Matt Rise’s group at the OSC, MUN in 2017.

Umasuthan has been working on aquatic animal models and has experience related to cloning, gene characterization, transcriptomics, recombinant proteins and functional assays. He has published more than 60 articles. He is currently involved in a Genome Canada funded project in collaboration with Cargill Innovation that assesses the impact of nutrition on salmon immune response using genomic and transcriptomic techniques.

Title: Functional genomics tools applied to the development of clinical diets against co-infection with sea lice and secondary pathogens

Speaker: Navaneethaiyer Umasuthan1
Co-authors: Albert Caballero-Solares1, Xi Xue1, Jillian D. Westcott2, Zhiyu Chen2, Mark D. Fast3, Barbara F. Nowak4, Richard G. Taylor2 and Matthew L. Rise1

Organization: 1Department of Ocean Sciences, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Canada. 2Fisheries and Marine Institute, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Canada. 3Atlantic Veterinary College, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Canada. 4Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Launceston, Australia. 5 Cargill Animal Nutrition, Elk River, Minnesota, USA.

Abstract: Marine parasites such as sea lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) increase host susceptibility to secondary pathogens by damaging the barrier function of skin and suppressing immunity. Sea lice have emerged as major infectious agents affecting both cultured and wild Atlantic salmon. Our laboratory-based studies assessed (1) molecular biomarkers that respond to the attachment of chalimus (juvenile lice) on salmon fins, and (2) the impact of novel functional feeds on salmon’s immune response against sea lice infestation and co-stimulation with pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). Microarray data suggested that lice infestation caused immunosuppression by downregulating several immune transcripts. While lice count was found to be significantly reduced by the two functional feeds tested, qPCR revealed diet-related effects on the dorsal skin immune response against lice+PAMP co-stimulation. We anticipate that outcomes of this ongoing project will be the basis for the development of management strategies against sea lice and co-infections.