Josep V. Planas

International Pacific Halibut Commission · Biological and Ecosystem Science Branch

Sensitivity analyses have identified uncertainty regarding sex ratios within commercial landings of Pacific Halibut Hippoglossus stenolepis as an influential source of variance within annual stock assessments for this species in U.S. and Canadian waters. Sex composition of dockside landings cannot be directly observed because all retained fish must...

The Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) is a key species in the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea ecosystems, where it also supports important fisheries. However, the lack of genomic resources limits our understanding of evolutionary, environmental and anthropogenic forces affecting key life history characteristics of Pacific halibut and pre...

Developing a robust understanding of Pacific halibut reproductive biology is essential to understanding the different components (e.g. maturity) that determine the reproductive output of the species and, therefore, for estimating the relative female spawning biomass. With these, effective and proactive management strategies can be designed and impl...

Pacific Halibut Hippoglossus stenolepis captured in directed commercial longline fisheries in Canada and the USA that are below the legal minimum size for retention must be returned to the sea without incurring additional injury. Estimates of mortality caused by discarding sublegal‐sized fish are included in annual estimates of total mortality from...

Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) supports one of the most valuable groundfish fisheries in the North Pacific Ocean and the north American component has been managed by the International Pacific Halibut Commission since 1923. From its establishment, IPHC’s work has been focused on data collection and research programs to better understand s...

Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) is managed as a single stock throughout the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) and eastern Bering Sea (BS), but biogeographical barriers and the potential for differential impacts of climate change may alter habitat use and distributions, and restrict connectivity between these ecosystems. To improve our understanding of...

The integration of multiple tissues in physiological and ecological analyses can enhance methodological approaches, increase applications for data and extend interpretation of results. Previous investigations of the stress response in fish have focused primarily on cortisol levels in a single matrix—blood plasma—which confines interpretations of co...

In the U.S. West Coast groundfish bottom trawl fishery, Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) bycatch can impact some fishers' ability to fully utilize their quota shares of groundfishes. In this study, we compared the catch efficiency for Pacific halibut and four commercially important groundfish species between an illuminated and non-illumina...

In the U.S. West Coast groundfish bottom trawl fishery, Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) bycatch can impact some fishers' ability to fully utilize their quota shares of groundfishes. In this study, we compared the catch efficiency for Pacific halibut and four commercially important groundfish species between an illuminated and non-illumina...

Accurate characterization of oocyte development is essential to understanding foundational aspects of reproductive biology and successful management of Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis). Here this study provides complete histological descriptions for eight oocyte developmental stages in addition to postovulatory follicles and demonstrates t...

We review knowledge on applications of sustained aerobic swimming as a tool to promote productivity and welfare of farmed fish species. There has been extensive interest in whether providing active species with a current to swim against can promote growth. The results are not conclusive but the studies have varied in species, life stage, swimming s...

Exercise promotes a set of physiological responses known to provide long-term health benefits and it can play an important role in cardioprotection. In the present study, we examined cardiac responses to exercise training in the adult zebrafish and in the context of cardiac regeneration. We found that swimming-induced exercise increased cardiomyocy...

Background: Male European seabass, already predominant (~ 70%) in cultured stocks, show a high incidence (20-30%) of precocious sexual maturation under current aquaculture practices, leading to important economic losses for the industry. In view of the known modulation of reproductive development by swimming exercise in other teleost species, we a...

Skeletal muscle is a plastic tissue that undergoes cellular and metabolic adaptations under conditions of increased contractile activity such as exercise. Using adult zebrafish as an exercise model, we previously demonstrated that swimming training stimulates hypertrophy and vascularization of fast muscle fibers, consistent with the known muscle gr...

Fish are constantly exposed to microorganisms in the aquatic environment, many of which are bacterial pathogens. Bacterial pathogens activate the innate immune response in fish involving the production of pro-inflammatory molecules that, in addition to their immune-related role, can affect non-immune tissues. In the present study, we aimed at inves...

The main aim of this Research Topic is to showcase some of the current studies designed to improve our understanding of the physiological energetic and metabolic requirements of swimming and of the adaptive responses to swimming in fish. A total of 9 articles are presented, covering topics related to swimming performance in wild and aquaculture-rele...

The king scallop Pecten maximus is a high valuable species of great interest in Europe for both fishery and aquaculture. Notably, there has been an increased investment to produce seed for enhancement programmes of wild scallop populations. However, hatchery production is a relatively new industry and it is still underdeveloped. Major hurdles are s...

Blastx best hit of each probe represented in the microarray platform. (XLSX)

Enrichment analysis of DEGs between stripped and spawned oocytes. (XLSX)

Correlation between gene expression and D-larval rate. (XLSX)

Enrichment analysis of transcripts correlated with D-larval rate. (XLSX)

Pecten maximus transcriptome assembly. (DOCX)

DEGs between stripped and spawned oocytes. (XLSX)

This study describes the development and validation of an enriched oligonucleotide-microarray platform for Sparus aurata (SAQ) to provide a platform for transcriptomic studies in this species. A transcriptome database was constructed by assembly of gilthead sea bream sequences derived from public repositories of mRNA together with reads from a larg...

The gilthead seabream and the soles, Senegalese sole and common sole, are important species in Mediterranean aquaculture. In this chapter, a review of the current genomic resources available for these species is carried out. First, transcriptome information, their main characteristics, and the high-throughput gene expression tools developed in thes...

1. Introduction2. Physiological Demands of Swimming Exercise and the Stress Continuum 2.1. Introduction2.2. Neuroendocrine Aspects of Stress and Exercise2.3. Energy Metabolism During Stress and Exercise2.4. Cardiovascular and Respiratory Adjustments to Stress and Exercise2.5. Limits of Swimming Exercise and Stress3. Physiological Adaptations to Swi...

The flat oyster, Ostrea edulis, is one of the main farmed oysters, not only in Europe but also in the United States and Canada. Bonamiosis due to the parasite Bonamia ostreae has been associated with high mortality episodes in this species. This parasite is an intracellular protozoan that infects haemocytes, the main cells involved in oyster defenc...

Manchado, M., Planas, J.V., Cousin, X., Rebordinos, L., Gonzalo Claros, M. Current Status in other Fish Species: Description of current genomic resources for the gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) and soles (Solea senegalensis and Solea solea). In: “Genomics in Aquaculture”. MacKenzie, S., Jentoft, S., eds. Academic Press. ISBN: 978-0-12-8014189. 20...

The bivalve immune transcriptome was analyzed in mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis, Mytilus edulis) and clams (Ruditapes decussates, Ruditapes philippinarum) using 454 high-throughput sequencing of stimulated hemocytes. Pyrosequencing resulted in more than 400,000 reads for all of the transcriptomes. The assembly process yielded a total of 14,158,...

Abstract for a presentation on the FITFISH COST action annual conference in Belgrade, April 2016

Common sole fed with commercial pellets develop anaemia and are restricted in their growth performance. The anaemia can be the result of a difference in feed intake, a nutritional deficiency, an inflammatory response to infection or combinations of these aspects. In this study, it was investigated whether feeding ragworm would alleviate the anaemia...

Reproductive homing migration of salmonids requires accurate interaction between the reception of external olfactory cues for navigation to the spawning grounds and the regulation of sexual maturation processes. This study aimed at providing insights into the hypothesized functional link between olfactory sensing of the spawning ground and final se...

Ovulation is induced by the preovulatory surge of luteinizing hormone (LH) that acts on the ovary and triggers the rupture of the preovulatory ovarian follicle by stimulating proteolysis and apoptosis in the follicle wall, causing the release of the mature oocyte. The pro-inflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα) and prostaglandin (PG) F...

The physiological consequences of the activation of the immune system in skeletal muscle in fish are not completely understood. To study the consequences of the activation of the immune system by bacterial pathogens on skeletal muscle function, we administered lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an active component of Gram-negative bacteria, in rainbow trout...

Glucose transporter 2 (GLUT2; gene name SLC2A2) has a key role in the regulation of glucose dynamics in organs central to metabolism. Although GLUT2 has been studied in the context of its participation in peripheral and central glucose sensing, its role in the brain is not well understood. To decipher the role of GLUT2 in brain development, we knoc...

The adult skeletal muscle is a plastic tissue with a remarkable ability to adapt to different levels of activity by altering its excitability, its contractile and metabolic phenotype and its mass. We previously reported on the potential of adult zebrafish as a tractable experimental model for exercise physiology, established its optimal swimming sp...

BACKGROUND: Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis) and common sole (S. solea) are two economically and evolutionary important flatfish species both in fisheries and aquaculture. Although some genomic resources and tools were recently described in these species, further sequencing efforts are required to establish a complete transcriptome, and to ide...

Current view of the control of spermatogenesis by Fsh and Lh in non-mammalian vertebrates is largely based on teleosts with cystic and cyclic spermatogenesis. Much less is known concerning the specific actions of gonadotropins during semicystic germ cell development, a type of spermatogenesis in which germ cells are released into the tubular lumen...

Most tissues and organs, such as the brain, need glucose constantly, as an important source of energy. The low blood concentrations of glucose (hypoglycemia) can cause seizures, loss of consciousness, and death. On the other hand, long lasting elevation of blood glucose concentrations (hyperglycemia) can result in blindness, renal failure, cardiac...

The effects of nutrient availability on the transcriptome of cardiac and skeletal muscle tissues were assessed in juvenile gilthead sea bream fed with a standard diet at two feeding levels: (1) full ration size and (2) 70 % satiation followed by a finishing phase at the maintenance ration. Microarray analysis evidenced a characteristic transcriptom...

AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) is well known to be induced by exercise and to mediate important metabolic changes in the skeletal muscle of mammals. Despite the physiological importance of exercise as a modulator of energy use by locomotory muscle, the regulation of this enzyme by swimming has not been investigated in fish. We found that susta...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080628.].

The glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) plays a key role in glucose uptake in insulin target tissues. This transporter has been extensively studied in many species in terms of its function, expression and cellular traffic and complex mechanisms are involved in its regulation at many different levels. However, studies investigating the transcription of th...

Training at sustainable swimming speeds can produce changes in fish skeletal muscle that are important for aquaculture due to their growth-potentiating effects. Such changes may be even more relevant when fish are fed diets containing an increasing proportion of carbohydrates as an energy source. We evaluated the effects of moderate-intensity susta...

Ovulation is the process by which the mature oocyte is expelled from the surrounding layers in the ovarian follicle. This process involves the proteolytic degradation of a specific site in the follicle wall and its contraction to allow the release of the oocyte through the rupture site. The hormone that orchestrates all the events leading to ovulat...

Background Genomic resources for plant and animal species that are under exploitation primarily for human consumption are increasingly important, among other things, for understanding physiological processes and for establishing adequate genetic selection programs. Current available techniques for high-throughput sequencing have been implemented in...

Background: Genomic resources for plant and animal species that are under exploitation primarily for human consumption are increasingly important, among other things, for understanding physiological processes and for establishing adequate genetic selection programs. Current available techniques for high-throughput sequencing have been implemented i...

Deep RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) was performed to provide an in-depth view of the transcriptome of red and white skeletal muscle of exercised and non-exercised rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) with the specific objective to identify expressed genes and quantify the transcriptomic effects of swimming-induced exercise. Pubertal autumn-spawning seawat...

Sequence distribution of GO terms in relation to the number of sequences (SeqNr) of molecular functions of the white muscle transcriptome. (TIF)

Expression of reproductive-related contigs in red and white skeletal muscle of resting and swimming trout. Columns represent contig number, contig annotation, sequence length of the contig, read-per-kilo-base-of-exon-model (RPKM) value for swimmers, RPKM value for resters, fold change (fc) expression by RPKM. Abbreviations: estrogen receptor beta (...

Up regulated contigs (>500 nt) in the white muscle of swimmers. See legend Table S3 for a description. (DOCX)

Q-PCR validation of fold change (fc) expression by read-per-kilo-base-of-exon-model (RPKM) values of selected contigs in red and white muscle of swimmers. Contigs were selected based on whether they were larger than 500 nt, had a SIGENAE salmonid annotation and were differentially expressed at a fc ≤0.5 or fc ≥2. Columns represent contig annotation...