Journal of Food Processing & Technology

Impact of biotechnology in fish health management

International Conference and Exhibition on Food Processing & Technology

November 22-24, 2012 Hyderabad International Convention Centre, India

Megha Agarwal, Heena Sharma and Meena Goswami

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Food Process Technol

Abstract:

Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing food-producing sectors, supplying approximately 40% of the world?s fish food. Besides such benefits to the society, the growth, no doubt, has been accompanied by economic loss due to fish diseases. Thus, there is considerable interest in exploring marine habitats for novel biotechnologies. Hence, biotechnology has many applications in fish health management. Rapid detection and identification of pathogens is crucial for effective disease management. Now, it is possible to prevent the diseases by the use of vaccination which significantly reduces the use of antibiotics. Most of the commercial vaccines available comprise inactivated (killed) disease agent. Immunological methods such as FAT, IFAT, IHC, ELISA and dot blot or western blot enables the rapid detection of pathogens without the need to isolate the pathogen. Monoclonal antibodies provide the ideal standardized reagents for such tests and many are now commercially available. Now, the detection of fish antibody to specific pathogen has also been made possible by serology, which is recognized as useful indicator of previous exposure to pathogen. Multiplex testing system (e.g. using Luminex technology), in which a variety of pathogens or immune response molecules (e.g. cytokines, lysozyme,IgM) can be detected, simultaneously, it offers a new dimension to fish health management and, in the future, such tests will make a significant impact on disease screening programs in aquaculture. Luminex technology also offers the potential for epitope mapping and therefore for vaccine development. The merging of two existing technologies (2-dimensional gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry) led to the new field of proteomics. Even in combination with mass spectrometry, only the more abundant proteins can be detected, thus indicating the need for new technologies. Protein arrays and, in particular, antibody micro-arrays might hold potential for the future.