Anusha K . S. Dhanasiri

Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) · Faculty of Veterinary Medicine

Background Given the importance of gut microbiota for health, growth and performance of the host, the aquaculture industry has taken measures to develop functional fish feeds aiming at modulating gut microbiota and inducing the anticipated beneficial effects. However, present understanding of the impact of such functional feeds on the fish is limit...

Functional feed ingredients are frequently used in feeds for Atlantic salmon, often claimed to improve immune functions in the intestine and reduce severity of gut inflammation. However, documentation of such effects is, in most cases, only indicative. In the present study effects of two packages of functional feed ingredients commonly used in salm...

Steatosis and inflammation have been common gut symptoms in Atlantic salmon fed plant rich diets. Choline has recently been identified as essential for salmon in seawater, and β-glucan and nucleotides are frequently used to prevent inflammation. The study is aimed at documenting whether increased fishmeal (FM) levels (8 levels from 0 to 40%) and su...

The concomitant increase in cultivation of fish and decrease in supply of marine ingredients, have greatly increased the demand for new nutrient sources. This also regards so-called functional ingredients which may benefit health and welfare of the fish. In vitro cell line-based intestinal epithelial barrier models may serve as tools for narrowing...

Animal domestication is a process of environmental modulation and artificial selection leading to permanent phenotypic modifications. Recent studies showed that phenotypic changes occur very early in domestication, i.e., within the first generation in captivity, which raises the hypothesis that epigenetic mechanisms may play a critical role on the...

With the expansion of the aquaculture industry in the last two decades, there has been a large increase in the use of plant ingredients in aquafeeds, which has created new challenges in fish growth, health and welfare. Fish muscle growth is an important trait that is strongly affected by diet, but our knowledge on the effect of plant protein-based...

Evolutionary theory predicts that clonal organisms are more susceptible to extinction than sexually reproducing organisms, due to low genetic variation and slow rates of evolution. In agreement, conservation management considers genetic variation as the ultimate measure of a population's ability to survive over time. However, clonal plants are amon...

Fungi, particularly yeasts, are known essential components of the host microbiota but their functional relevance in the development of immunity and physiological processes of fish remains to be elucidated. In this study, we used a transcriptomic approach and a germ-free (GF) fish model to determine the response of newly hatched zebrafish larvae aft...

Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, can be regulated by nutrition and dietary factors. There has been a large increase in the use of sustainable plant-based protein sources in fish feed due to limitations of fishmeal resources that are needed to sustain a rapidly growing aquaculture industry. With this huge transition from marine ing...

The epidermal mucus protects fish against harmful environmental factors and the loss of physiological metabolites and water. It is an efficient barrier between the fish and the biosphere. The integrity of the skin mucus is thus of vital importance for the welfare and survival of the fish. Since excreted proteins and small molecules in the mucus can...

Background Early development of an oviparous organism is based on maternally stocked structural, nutritional and regulatory components. These components influence the future developmental potential of an embryo, which is referred to as egg quality. Until zygotic genome activation, translational activity in a fish early embryo is limited to parental...

Supplementary Material for "Towards population genomics in non-model species with large genomes: a case study of the marine zooplankton Calanus finmarchicus"

Advances in next-generation sequencing technologies and the development of genome-reduced representation protocols have opened the way to genome-wide population studies in non-model species. However, species with large genomes remain challenging, hampering the development of genomic resources for a number of taxa including marine arthropods. Here,...

Over the last decade, the use of plant-based proteins in aquafeeds has largely increased, currently amounting up to 70% in salmon feeds. With this transition from fish meal to green diets, fish may be exposed to anti-nutritional factors, mycotoxins and other plant-associated contaminants leading to new challenges for fish health and welfare, as wel...

Copepods of the genus Calanus play a key role in marine food webs as consumers of primary producers and as prey for many commercially important marine species. Within the genus, Calanus glacialis and Calanus finmarchicus are considered indicator species for Arctic and Atlantic waters, respectively, and changes in their distributions are frequently...

Planktonic copepods of the genus Calanus play a central role in North Atlantic/Arctic marine food webs. Here, using molecular markers, we redrew the distributional ranges of Calanus species inhabiting the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans and revealed much wider and more broadly overlapping distributions than previously described. The Arctic shelf s...

Introduction For the sustainable growth of the world aquaculture industry, exploration of novel protein sources for fish feed is a necessity due to the limitation of marine fishmeal resources. The last decade has seen a huge increase in use of plant based proteins in aquafeeds; currently salmon feeds consists up to 70% of plant- based proteins comp...

Evolutionary theory predicts that low genetic variation reduces a population’s ability to cope with environmental variability and to adapt to changing environments. However, the evolutionary success of big old clones of the seagrass Zostera marina challenges the direct relationship between genetic diversity and adaptation potential. We aim to test...

Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis) is a highly valued flatfish that grows well with diets containing plant ingredients but their effects on immune competence is still a matter of debate. The current study aimed to examine changes in innate immune parameters and gut microbiota in Senegalese sole fed with 35% or 72% of plant ingredients with or wit...

Liver plays a key role during the stress acclimation, and liver transcriptome analysis of shipped zebrafish could reveal the molecular adjustments that occur in the organ. Transcriptional changes in liver were analyzed with a 44 K oligo array using total RNA from fish prior to transport and during a mock transport process - immediately after packin...

Supporting tables. Table S1 Primers used for quantitative real time PCR. Table S2 Water quality parameters measured in the transport bags during mock transport of zebrafish. Table S3 Full list of genes that are significantly upregulated in the zebrafish liver during the transport process. Table S4 Full list of genes that are significantly downregul...

Abstract Welfare of fish is commonly neglected when they are transported. This study examines the effect of a 72-h mock transport on certain aspects of the stress physiology of two groups of zebrafish-the first transported in water enriched with a nitrifying bacterial consortium and the second in water without the enrichment. Zebrafish were examine...

The enzyme glutamine synthetase (GS; glutamate-ammonia ligase, EC 6.3.1.2) plays an important role in the nitrogen metabolism of fish. In this study the GS activity and the corresponding genes were examined to understand how they are regulated in zebrafish in response to hyperammonemic stress during a 72h simulated transport. Whole body ammonia lev...

The effects of dietary mannan oligosaccharides (MOS; 4 g kg(-1) ; Bio-Mos, Alltech Inc, USA) in diets for European sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax (L.), juveniles in relation to disease and stress resistance, combining intestinal infection with Vibrio anguillarum and stress challenge by confinement, were assessed in this study. After 8 weeks of MOS...

To evaluate whether two commercial nitrifying bacterial consortia can function as biocontrol agents in ornamental fish transporting systems. The consortia were applied in a simulated set-up using zebrafish as the model organism in three trials. The efficacy of the bacterial consortia in controlling the ammonia level was validated by measuring water...

The commensal microbiota plays an important role in the well-being of the host organism, and it would be worthwhile to know the tenacious communities among them. Therefore, a study was undertaken to examine the changes in constitution of the intestinal microbiota of wild fish consequential to captivity. At first, the composition of intestinal micro...