Research Projects

When fish are maintained in captivity their reproductive performance is generally poor, and the success rate is considerably lower of what would be expected under natural conditions. Traditional approaches for enhancing reproductive outcomes, such as environmental manipulation and dietary supplementation, often yield inconsistent results. Furthermore, treatment with hormones such as exogenous gonadotropin leads to detrimental effects on normal fertilization and embryo development. With the imminent global need to increase sustainable fish production, an understanding of hormones controlling reproduction and developing techniques for improving reproductive performance is of highest importance. Thus, the project aims to use an inhibin-based nanovaccine (IBN) (anti-inhibin antibody conjugated with chitosan nanoparticles) approach to improve the reproductive performance of Oncorhynchus mykiss (rainbow trout), a species of commercial importance. The project further aims to study effect of the nanovaccine on endocrine and reproductive pathways. With the proposed approach this project will test the hypothesis that targeting endogenous inhibin using nanovaccine will affect rainbow trout physiological responses at protein and gene expression levels and will improve reproductive performances and egg/sperm quality under captive conditions. This concept has already been tested positively on female Catfish (Ahmad et al., 2018a) but never in males and in highly valued commercial species. The project will also focus on responses mediated by the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis in rainbow trout in which inhibin is ablated immunologically. It will be first time wherein the effect of inhibin ablation will be studied in males. Advanced techniques such as ELISA, transcriptomics, and bioinformatics will be used to investigate the different levels of response to the vaccination. Key questions include the vaccine’s influence on gametogenesis, its efficacy across different life stages, and its scalability for commercial use. Expected outcomes include novel insights into the reproductive biology of fish, development of research tools like polyclonal antibodies, and the potential commercialization of the vaccine. This project could also provide a broader framework for reproductive enhancement in other economically and ecologically important fish species.