Physiology of Aquatic Organisms and Applied Biotechnology

Physiology of Aquatic Organisms and Applied Biotechnology (OCA 1215/12; 1406/17; 1412/17)  is a research group recently formed and devoted to the study of a variety of aquatic animals – as crustaceans, mollusks and fish- with focus in their nutrition and immunology. This approach allows us to understand the biochemical and physiological processes that modulate their adaptations to a particular environment. The knowledge about biochemical mechanisms related to the immunity and digestive physiology let us to link species to their habitat according to their physioecological features. Over the last years, it has been demonstrated that studying the immunological processes associated to the biochemical physiology can help to determine organisms overall health status. However, most research efforts have been directed to study separately the physiology and immunology; as consequence, little is known about the linkage between metabolic and immunological processes. Therefore, to study the immunological condition of an organism an integrative analysis is required. Some recent nutritional studies emphasize that feed not only has to fill nutritional needs, but also should modulate several organism functions and must play a beneficial role during illnesses. In aquaculture industry research efforts have been directed to understand digestive physiology, becoming in Usually, fish meal is the main ingredient employed in feed formulations, in Argentina this meal is prepared from fish processing wastes and/or non-target organisms that were captured. One of the main goals for food technologists is to promote the use of fisheries wastes through mild methods that allow raw material recovery and, thus, keep their nutritional components increasing their added value. The growing development in science and technology opens new opportunities to improve the country productivity. In the last years, the professional staff of this research group studied and tuned up several techniques related to the study of enzyme activity in a variety of species (Fernández Gimenez, 2013; Fernández Gimenez et al., 2009, 2014). In this sense, the main goal of this group is to re-evaluate fishery wastes through the study of the digestive physiology of organisms comprising these sub-exploited resources. Moreover, we encourage the application of our cumulative knowledge about enzymes in the biotechnological field in order to improve national food industry and aquaculture. We offer an alternative use of fishery wastes, reducing negative environmental impacts and promoting environmental sustainability.