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Asked by harv to Madgie on 11 Nov 2013. This question was also asked by deskwater.
Question: what would you achieve with your project with how atlantic salmon tell the time and what will you do with that infomation?
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Marlene Lorgen answered on 11 Nov 2013:
Good question which I sometimes wonder about myself! What we hope to find out is which genes are responsible for telling salmon to start changing to be ready for migration. When salmon migrate, they change to survive in salt rather than freshwater.
The aquaculture industry which grows fish for the purpose of using them as food, look for ways to increase the numbers and size of fish that they produce. Knowing how changes in salmon biology are triggered help to ensure that animals are kept in good conditions which will not cause them stress during production. I hope that our results can contribute to maintaining good animal welfare standards in this industry.
Comments
harv commented on :
Is this project not interfearing with the balance of nature if you’d like to increase the numbers and size of fish for production with other consequences?
Madgie commented on :
Interesting question. This project does not actually do any of the changing numbers or sizes, it just may feed into later work which may. The aquaculture industry already uses techniques such as creating false summer conditions using long daylength light conditions to change the rate at which fish grow and the size at which they can grow to (this is natural mainpulation). There is also a lot of work looking at making genetically modified (GM) salmon, which includes making these GM fish sterile so that they cannot interfere with natural populations and so should not affect the natural balance of nature.
Werner commented on :
biological clocks are a fascinating subject to study. They are very old in evolution and are present also in us. Clocks can not only influence salmon but also us. Some of us can get up early and some of us do not like this at all.