Marieke Verleih

Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN) | FBN

The diversification of modern aquaculture systems with high-value finfish species, includingPercidae, is hampered by various diseases or even epidemics caused by a wide range ofviruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites. The present meta-analysis revealed six viral, four fungal,and 30 bacterial families as the dominant threats to percid aquaculture, in...

As many as 100 million salmonid fish are tagged annually by removing the adipose fin, usually for recovery statistics and the fishing industry. In a multi-parametrical approach, we evaluated the response to resection of the adipose fin in rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss over the course of 72 h. Both the concentrations of lactate and the cerebral...

Citation: Verleih, M.; Visnovska, T.; Nguinkal, J.A.; Rebl, A.; Goldammer, T.; Andreassen, R. The Discovery and Characterization of Conserved and Novel miRNAs in the Different Developmental Stages and Organs of Pikeperch (Sander lucioperca). Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2024, 25, 189. https:// Abstract: Micro RNAs (miRNAs) are short non-coding RNAs that act a...

The effects of semi-intensive (100 kg m−3), intensive (200 kg m−3), and super-intensive (400 kg m−3) stocking densities on the growth and welfare of African catfish (Clarias gariepinus) were investigated under commercial production conditions. Plasma cortisol, glucose, and selected transcripts following a stress challenge, lactate, as well as skin...

In this study, a cell line of the fish species Coregonus maraena was produced for the first time. C. maraena is an endangered species, and studies indicate that this fish species will be affected by further population declines due to climate change. This cell line, designated CMAfin1, has been maintained in Leibovitz L‐15 supplemented with 10% feta...

Fungal diseases of fish are a significant economic problem in aquaculture. Using high-throughput expression analysis, we identified potential transcript markers in primary head kidney and secondary embryonic cells from salmonid fish after stimulation with the inactivated fungi Mucor hiemalis and Fusarium aveneacium and with purified fungal molecula...

Promising efforts are ongoing to extend genomics resources for pikeperch (Sander lucioperca), a species of high interest for the sustainable European aquaculture sector. Although previous work, including reference genome assembly, transcriptome sequence, and single-nucleotide polymorphism genotyping, added a great wealth of genomic tools, a compreh...

Fish disease resistance is one of the most desirable traits for aquaculture production. It is known that up to 90% of immune response relies on the innate immunity. Fish innate immunity could be potentially heritable since it is determined by fish local adaptation based on genetic differentiation or population-specific environment. Therefore, using...

Inadequate oxygen saturation can induce stress responses in fish and further affect their immunity. Pikeperch, recently introduced in intensive aquaculture, is suggested to be reared at nearly 100% DO (dissolved oxygen), yet this recommendation can be compromised by several factors including the water temperature, stocking densities or low circulat...

There are still numerous difficulties in the successful farming of pikeperch in the anthropogenic environment of various aquaculture systems, especially during early developmental steps in the hatchery. To investigate the physiological processes involved on the molecular level, we determined the basal expression patterns of 21 genes involved in str...

Pikeperch (Sander lucioperca) is a fish species with growing economic significance in the aquaculture industry. However, successful positioning of pikeperch in large-scale aquaculture requires advances in our understanding of its genome organization. In this study, an ultra-high density linkage map for pikeperch comprising 24 linkage groups and 1,0...

European perch, Perca fluviatilis, is a highly promising candidate for freshwater aquaculture diversification. It has great potential to deliver products of sensory quality and nutritional value according to the market demands in the EU. However, the production is often hampered by bacterial diseases causing low growth and mass mortality in intensi...

The objective of the present study is to identify and evaluate informative indicators for the welfare of rainbow trout exposed to (A) a water temperature of 27 °C and (B) a stocking density of 100 kg/m3 combined with a temperature of 27 °C. The spleen-somatic and condition index, haematocrit and the concentrations of haemoglobin, plasma cortisol an...

Two structurally similar NF-κB-inhibitor-interacting Ras-like proteins (NKIRAS) regulate the activity of the transcription factor NF-κB and thereby control several early immune mechanisms in mammals. We identified the orthologous sequences of NKIRAS1 and NKIRAS2 from the rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss. The level of sequence identity was similarl...

Selective breeding can significantly improve the establishment of sustainable and profitable aquaculture fish farming. For rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), one of the main aquaculture coldwater species in Europe, a variety of selected hatchery strains are commercially available. In this study, we investigated the genetic variation between the l...

The daily change of light and dark periods influences different physiological processes including feeding, resting and locomotor activity. Previously, several studies on mammalian models revealed a strong link between day-night rhythms and key immunological parameters. Since teleost fishes possess innate and adaptive immune responses like those obs...

The interleukin-1-receptor-associated kinase 3 (IRAK3) is known in mammals as a negative feedback regulator of NF-κB-mediated innate-immune mechanisms. Our RNA-seq experiments revealed a prototypic 1920-nt sequence encoding irak3 from rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), as well as 20 variants that vary in length and nucleotide composition. Based o...

The pikeperch (Sander lucioperca) is a fresh and brackish water Percid fish natively inhabiting the northern hemisphere. This species is emerging as a promising candidate for intensive aquaculture production in Europe. Specific traits like cannibalism, growth rate and meat quality require genomics based understanding, for an optimal husbandry and d...

Apoptosis is an integral part of homeostasis and supports multiple physiological processes such as development and immune defense, thereby directly targeting damaged or unwanted cells without affecting neighbor cells. In the present study, we characterized the apoptotic key factors caspase-3, −7, and − 8 as well as regulator protein TPT1 (translati...

The creatine/phosphocreatine system is the principal energy buffer in mammals, but is scarcely documented in fish. We measured the gene expression of major enzymes of this system, glycine amidinotransferase (GATM), guanidinoacetate N-methyltransferase (GAMT) and muscle-type creatine kinase (CKM) in kidney, liver, and muscle tissues of fish and mamm...

Bacterial infection on aquaculture facilities are a major problem for productivity and quality of fish production. One of the most common and important pathogens is Aeromonas salmonicida. This Gram-negative bacterium is the causative agent of the disease furunculosis, which had a devastating impact on salmonid aquaculture up until the late 1980's....

Polysialic acid (polySia) is a linear carbohydrate polymer consisting of N-acetylneuraminic acid residues and is involved in several physiological processes. In the present study, we identified the multifunctional protein lactoferrin as a novel interaction partner for polySia. Lactoferrin co-precipitated when polySia was isolated from human blood,...

The complex and still poorly understood nature of thermoregulation in various fish species complicates the determination of the physiological status on the basis of diagnostic marker genes and indicative molecular pathways. The present study aimed to compare the physiological impacts of both gradual and acute temperature rise from 18 to 24°C on mar...

A rapid decline in temperature poses a major challenge for poikilothermic fish, as their entire metabolism depends on ambient temperature. The gene expression of rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss having undergone such a cold shock (\(0{^{\circ }}\hbox {C}\)) was compared to a control (\(5{^{\circ }}\hbox {C}\)) in a microarray and quantitative real...

Stocking density is considered as a key factor determining the productivity of fish aquaculture systems. The transcriptomic response to crowding stress is, however, still poorly investigated. We aimed to identify potential biomarker genes via microarray analyses to gain insight into molecular pathways modulated by density-induced stress in farmed r...

Seasonal water temperatures can be stressful for fish in aquaculture and can therefore negatively influence their welfare. Although the kidney is the crucial organ associated with the primary stress response, knowledge about the stress-modulated kidney transcriptome in salmonids is limited. In the present study, we used a comparative microarray app...

Creatine plays an important role in the cell as an energy buffer. As the energy system is a basic element of the organism it may possibly contribute to differences between rainbow trout strains selected for the traits growth and robustness, respectively. The cDNA sequences of creatine-related genes encoding glycine amidinotransferase (GATM), guanid...

The fish gills represent a crucial organ for the communication with the aquatic environment. Transcriptional changes in gills of two hatchery rainbow trout strains in response to injection with the potent pathogen Aeromonas salmonicida were detected by global gene expression profiling using a 4×44K oligonucleotide microarray. Emphasis was placed on...

The peritoneal cavity has been extensively used as a laboratory model of inflammation in many species, including the teleost fish. Although, the peritoneal cavity of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) was previously shown to contain a resident population of leukocytes, closer information about their exact composition and their functional response...

Thermal stress can pose a major challenge to salmonid fish. A 4x44K oligonucleotide microarray approach was used to screen for genetically determined variations of a temperature stress response during acclimation in fish gills, a highly specialized and complex organ responsible for gas and electrolyte exchange as well as excretion. The comparison a...

The iron–sulfur cluster protein ISCU is a scaffold protein tasked with the building and mediation of iron–sulfur [Fe–S]-clusters. These are crucial for [Fe–S]-enzymes, which are involved in essential biological cell processes like metabolism or ion transport. Analysis of ISCU in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and maraena whitefish (Coregonus m...

Mammalian neural epidermal growth factor-like-like 1 and 2 genes (NELL1 and NELL2) encode multifunctional glycoproteins involved in cell growth regulation and differentiation. We isolated two closely related NELL2 transcript sequences from rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). These conceptually translated NELL2a and -b sequences share 83% identical...

Supplementary Figure S1 Alignment of predicted RGN protein sequences from rainbow trout and maraena whitefish with all known teleostean homologues as well as respective sequences of higher vertebrates. Accession numbers of used proteins and abbreviations are listed in Table 2. Identical and strongly similar amino acids are labeled by black and dar...

The mud worm genus Marenzelleria is highly invasive and is therefore studied intensively. In recently invaded habitats, sympatric populations of the sibling species Marenzelleria viridis and Marenzelleria neglecta are found. In these secondary contact zones, hybridization occurs frequently, revealing incomplete reproductive isolation between these...

Since 1975, the rainbow trout strain BORN (Germany) has been bred in brackish water from a coastal form imported from Denmark. Accompanying phenotypic monitoring of the adapted BORN trout until now revealed that this selection strain manifested a generally elevated resistance towards high stress and pathogenic challenge including lower susceptibili...

Ubiquitination regulates the activity, stability, and localization of a wide variety of proteins. Several mammalian MARCH ubiquitin E3 ligase proteins have been suggested to control cell surface immunoreceptors. The mitochondrial protein MARCH5 is a positive regulator of Toll-like receptor 7-mediated NF-κB activation in mammals. In the present stud...

The Ca(2+)-binding protein regucalcin (RGN) is crucial for the regulation of Ca(2+) ion homeostasis and signal transduction of cells. It is involved in the regulation of Ca(2+)-dependent protein kinases and Ca(2+) pump enzymes in cell membranes. Comparative transcriptome analysis in healthy fish of two aquacultured rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykis...

The proline-rich protein 13 (PRR13) is reported to be a key regulator of the resistance to cytostatica by decreasing the copy number of the proapoptotic gene thrombospondin-1. We isolated and characterized the complete PRR13 gene sequence of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). The gene comprises four exons and three introns, the latter of comparat...

Robustness is a sparsely observed trait in rainbow trout aquaculture; however, the different stress adaptation potential of fish and its commercial relevance is undervalued. Compared with other economical traits, such as growth or body weight, characterization of robustness and specific statements about the trait are very complex. Therefore, trait...