Team:Vilnius-Lithuania/test/index.html

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flavoflow

Throughout history fish have always been one of the most important food sources.

The consumption of aquaculture products has been steadily increasing during the past 50 years and has now doubled since.

Growing fish consumption drives a need for a more intensive fish farming - a need which emerging aquaculture farms have stepped in to satisfy.

In order to obtain greater amounts of fish in a shorter period of time, aquafarms have implemented recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS).

Advantages of RAS

reduced water and land needs

fully controlled environment

automated feeding strategy

Disadvantages of RAS

high electricity consumption

water quality

However, the biggest challenge is

Since the water in RAS is circulated between tanks, if one bacteria-infected fish enters the system, not long after, the entire RAS system can become contaminated.

Diseases caused by Flavobacterium spp. constitute one of the biggest host and geographic ranges of the bacterial fish pathogens.

The most common of these bacteria are the two opportunistic species:

Flavobacterium
psychrophilum

causes bacterial coldwater disease

Flavobacterium
columnare

causes columnaris disease

What's the deal with the fish?

Typically, these diseases are denoted by heavy bacterial colonizations of gill epithelium and eroded fin tips.

However, after these physical changes are being seen, the respiratory and osmoregulatory functions are already damaged.

Thus, if the disease is not detected in a span of a few days, it can result in massive fish die-offs.

Are there any solutions to this problem?

Actually, yes!

We have found three major approaches to solving the Flavoproblem.

detection

One of our main goals is the development of a rapid detection test is based on helicase-dependent amplification (HDA) and lateral-flow assay (LFA) methods. This kit will help farmers in identifying what the Flavo is in their tanks.

Detection, however, is only a tool which will reduce aquafarm’s losses - it will not solve the underlying problem.

treatment

Due to this reason, we have developed a new fundamental method to treat these diseases based on toxin-antitoxin or exolysin-endolysin systems.

On the other hand, no matter how perfect the treatment strategy is, it solves only the consequences of the disease.

prevention

Keeping this in mind, we have also created an innovative prevention tool, which is based on the packaging of immunogenic proteins into alginate beads.