Identification of genetic loci associated with higher resistance to pancreas disease (PD) in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.).

• Published in: BMC Genomics
• Main Authors: Hillestad, Borghild, Makvandi-Nejad, Shokouh, Krasnov, Aleksei, Moghadam, Hooman K
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: BioMed Central 2020
• Subjects: Atlantic salmon; Breeding; GWAS; Heritability; Pancreas disease; Transcriptome; Salmo salar
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-020-06788-4; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32493246; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7268189/

Pancreas disease (PD) is a contagious disease caused by salmonid alphavirus (SAV) with significant economic and welfare impacts on salmon farming. Previous work has shown that higher resistance against PD has underlying additive genetic components and can potentially be improved through selective breeding. To better understand the genetic basis of PD resistance in Atlantic salmon, we challenged 4506 smolts from 296 families of the SalmoBreed strain. Fish were challenged through intraperitoneal injection with the most virulent form of the virus found in Norway (i.e., SAV3). Mortalities were recorded, and more than 900 fish were further genotyped on a 55 K SNP array.