New Publication: Identifying a New IPNV Variant That Overcomes Genetic Resistance in Atlantic Salmon

SciFish Animalia’s CEO and CTO, Borghild Hillestad and Hooman K. Moghadam, are the key authors of a new study published in Frontiers in Genetics, building on research conducted during their time in the salmon breeding industry.

Infectious pancreatic necrosis (IPN) is one of the most serious viral diseases affecting Atlantic salmon farming. Over the past decade, selective breeding for genetic resistance to IPN has been widely regarded as one of the great success stories in aquaculture, dramatically reducing the number of outbreaks.
This study, however, identifies a new variant of the IPN virus recovered from a field outbreak in Western Norway, one that caused significant mortality even in genetically resistant fish. Using deep sequencing of the head-kidney transcriptome, the team recovered and assembled the full-length genome of this new viral variant, raising important questions about the long-term durability of resistance-based breeding strategies and the need for continued genomic surveillance.
The findings highlight the importance of ongoing monitoring of viral evolution in salmon populations, and underscore how rapidly a pathogen can adapt in ways that challenge even well-established genetic defences.
Read the full article here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8663487