Development of a novel sea louse vaccine: an environmentally friendly tool for increasing sustainability of protein production in UK salmon aquaculture

英国大西洋鲑鱼养殖每年生产15万吨鱼，高品质的食品零售额超过10亿英镑。海虱是海洋中感染鲑鱼的寄生甲壳类动物，是养殖鲑鱼蛋白质生产可持续性的关键制约因素，每年花费英国工业超过3000万英镑进行控制。海虱感染为英国和全球鲑鱼养殖业提供了最大的经济和福利问题。虽然在过去10年中通过使用药物已经实现了对海虱数量的良好控制，但最近寄生虫对控制的耐药性的发展对英国和全球水产养殖业的可持续性构成了重大威胁。因此，在本项目中，一个多学科和多部门的研究小组将尝试开发一种新型疫苗，能够有效地、生态友好地控制养殖鲑鱼中的海虱感染。该研究联盟将建立在他们在该领域的广泛经验的基础上，以产生关于鲑鱼免疫系统对抗海虱感染的机制的新知识，并将确定这种寄生虫用于干扰宿主免疫的机制，人们认识到这种寄生虫分泌一系列免疫活性产物。为了实现这些目标，申请人将采用最先进的技术，包括基因组挖掘、高通量测序和蛋白质质谱法，以鉴定可能的寄生虫蛋白质靶标，并检查它们作为候选疫苗的功能和有效性。

UK Atlantic salmon aquaculture produces 150,000 tonnes of fish per year, with high quality food products valued at more than £1 billion in retail sales. Sea lice, parasitic crustaceans infecting salmon in the sea, are a key constraint to the sustainability of farmed salmon protein production, costing UK industry more than £30 million per year to control. Sea louse infections provide the single largest economic and welfare problem for UK and global salmon aquaculture. While good control of sea louse numbers has been achieved over the last 10 yrs by the use of medicines, recently the development of parasite resistance to control is posing a major threat to the sustainability of the UK and global aquaculture industry. Therefore in this project, a multidisciplinary and multisectoral research team will attempt to develop a novel vaccine capable of providing effective, eco-friendly control of sea lice infections in farmed salmon. The research consortium will build on their extensive experience in the field to generate new knowledge concerning the mechanisms by which the immune systems of salmon fight sea louse infections and will also determine the mechanisms that this parasite uses to interfere with host immunity, it being recognised that this parasite secretes a range of immuno-active products. In order to achieve these aims, the applicants will employ state-of-the art techniques including genome-mining, high-throughput sequencing and protein mass spectrometry to identify possible parasite protein targets and to examine their functions and their effectiveness as vaccine candidates.