Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Washington
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Goals 1: Develop molecular tools to study the immune response in fish. Target genes will be used for the design and application of real-time quantitative RTPCR assays for studying the differential regulation of genes upon stimulation or infection. Goal 2: Production of cellular resources for studying immune response in fish. Candidate gene will be cloned into expression vectors for the production of recombinant proteins. The proteins will be used to generate specific antiserum against the given protein. Goal 3: To develop standarized challenge models for gram negative and positive bacterial pathogens in fish. Initially, a gram-positive model of infection will be developed for zebrafish. Data will include LD30 and mean time to death analyses.