Zprávy ze zahraničních cest

At the Aquaculture Europe 2023 conference held in Vienna from September 18 to 21, Serhii Boryshpolets presented the latest findings from the Laboratory of Reproductive Physiology in his talk, "Further steps in sperm handling in aquaculture." These findings included insights related to the activity of the laboratory on the NeoGiant project, which explores the potential replacement of antibiotics in the short-term storage of fish spermatozoa. The talk was held in the frame of the "Reproduction & broodstock management" section on Thursday, September 21.

On September 18-21, the researchers from the Laboratory of Molecular, Cellular and Quantitative Genetics (Martin Kocour, Martin Prchal and Martin Hubálek) attended the conference Aquaculture Europe 2023 on ‘Balanced Diversity in Aquaculture Development’. The conference was organised by the European Aquaculture Society and held in Vienna, Austria. Many delegates, scientific researchers, and early career researchers attended this conference and shared their knowledge and findings. The researcher from the Laboratory of Molecular, Cellular and Quantitative Genetics also shared the results of their research, through poster presentations.

During four-month internship from January 31st to May 31st, 2023, I had the opportunity to conduct three significant experiments. The initial experiment focused on refining techniques to assess the sublethal impacts of ammonia on adult freshwater mussels (Unionidae). The second experiment involved the meticulous assessment of a methodology for gauging the standard metabolic rates of crayfish, with the red swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) serving as the chosen test species. Lastly, I delved into studying the repercussions of artificial light pollution on the standard metabolic rate of Procambarus clarkii.

Throughout my internship, I had the privilege to explore various locations, and I also had the honour of participating in the "ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEASTERN BIOLOGISTS" conference held in North Carolina.

In term May 29 – June 1 I had a chance to attend World Aquaculture 2023 in Darwin, Australia. Conference was perfect opportunity for the international aquaculture community - academics, industry researchers, market and industry analysts, government offi cials, policy makers and industry representatives to present their work and exchange ideas and develop a vision for the future of the aquaculture industry as we focus on the theme of “Supporting Strength in Aquaculture”. During the conference we presented poster: GERM CELL MANIPULATION IN COMMON CARP  - TOOL FOR CONSERVATION MANAGEMENT. This study as well as conference attendace was supported by National Agriculture Agency project number QK1910428.

On July 28-29th, 2022, an international workshop with excoursion took place in Aigen-Schlägl, Austria. The aim of the workshop was the further development of cross-border cooperation with BOKU Vienna, the discussion of upcoming projects in the field of environmental protection, fishery and fishpond management. The workshop also included excursions (nature friendly measures on the river Gr. Mühl, Schlägl monastery) and joint discussions on the outputs of the project KPF-01-258/International innovation.

From the faculty, the event was attended by: Koleček Jiří, Dubová Jaroslava, Kobernová Ivana, Langová Jana, Kačerová Lucie, Nedopil Vladimír, Kasl Jiří, Nebeský Václav, Kub Petr.

From October 3rd until December 1st, I visited the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM) in Barcelona for internship. During my stay I joined Dr. Mercedes Blazquez team at the department of Renewable Marine Resources – Reproductive Endocrinology Group in investigating the molecular players behind the emergence of earlier onset of puberty and reproductive cycles abnormalities among cultured European seabass population.

The overall research activity focuses on the transcriptomic analysis of potential modulations in key genes and methylation patterns in testicular tissues of male European seabass induced by modifiers from environment and rearing systems. My active participation in the practical and theoretical tasks related to the research topic enhanced both my intellectual and methodological skills associated to laboratory techniques and to aquatic animal health and welfare.

On top of that, colleagues at the ICM express their openness and welcoming of possibilities to future collaboration between the two institutes in scientific research and project calls.

My visit was funded by Erasmus+ program and project PROFISH.

From October 9 to November 7, 2022, I completed an Erasmus+ internship at the secretariat of the European Aquaculture Society in Ostend (Belgium). During the internship, I learned more about the strategic and organizational process by which European institutions develop and implement policies in the aquaculture sector. In addition, I learned about the role of the EAS - providing membership, running mentoring programs and developing webinars and podcasts.One of the outputs of the internship was the publication of an article in the Aquaculture Europe newsletter entitled "EU AQUACULTURE AND FISHERIES POLICY IN A NUTSHELL".

The article is available online https://www.aquaeas.eu/images/stories/newsletter/NL_Sept-Oct_2022.pdf.

I had opportunity to gain insight into the functioning of the institutions of the European union thanks to the Erasmus + programme. I got acquainted with the activities of the Permanent Representation of the Czech Republic to the European Union and I participated in the meetings of the Council of the EU - AGRIFISH, working groups of the Common agriculture and fisheries policy in term 18^th till 22^nd of September 2023.

On 27 September, I participated as a member of the Steering Committee in the first meeting of the COST Action "Solving bottlenecks in eel reproduction to support sustainable aquaculture" (EELSUPPORT) CA22163".

In term October 17 to October 20,2022 Kašpar Vojtěch, Pšenička Martin, Nobrega Rafael Henrique attended annual meeting of Aquaexcel 3.0. The meeting was held in Heraklion (Crete) this year. Workshop provided excellent opportunity to discuss achieved results and possibilities of future cooperation in all workpackages of project and implementation of trans-national activities of Aquaexcel 3.0.

29-30. 6. As part of the preparation for the implementation of TNA (AQUAEXCEL3.0) focused on the automatic detection of symptoms of fish diseases using cameras, we visited the DTU (Denmark) workplace, which specializes in fish diseases (rainbow trout). In the laboratory, a system for recording video recordings in the tanks was tested, and the technical possibilities of placing computers and data transmission were discussed. The project itself will be in autumn 2023.

Borys Dzyuba and Anatolii Sotnikov participated in an international conference CRYO 2022 of the Society for Cryobiology and Society for Low Temperature Biology held in Ireland, Dublin, 19-22 July 2022. They have presented three oral presentations (Anatolii as a speaker and Borys as an invited speaker). Presentations were about post-thaw sperm subpopulations in fishes, a new method of carp sperm cryopreservation, and international cooperation in fish sperm cryobanking. The conference has followed by a meeting with representatives of ISIS Facility, STFC, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK) and Health Economics and Outcomes Research Ltd (UK). The possibilities of applying neutron scattering to study ice formation during cryopreservation and statistical methods of data analysis for multi-variate evaluation of sperm subpopulation appeared after cryopreservation in fishes were discussed. The future joint project with ISIS was drafted. The travel was performed in the frame of realization of the GACR project N 22-14069S. 

MSc. Tatyana Gebauer, Ph.D. had been working for two months in the Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN). Her stay aimed to get and process the data from gene expression profiles of immune responses among seven different European perch, Perca fluviatilis, populations against Aeromonas spp. stimuli. The results of this work will be presented at the 5th Percid Fish International Symposium

We would like to acknowledge the Erasmus+ program for supporting this trip financially.

I participated in the conference „Fellow ship of the data“ which was co-organized by Elixir and Humboldt University from 21st to 22nd June 2023. The conference took place at the Erwin-Schrödinger-Zentrum, Berlin - Adlershof.

This meeting is a specialized event aimed at professionals working with data in life sciences, encompassing different roles such as researchers, data managers, computer scientists, technical specialists and others. The main goal of the event is to develop a strong community of research data management trainers and to enable knowledge exchange, collaboration and networking. It focuses on sharing experiences, proven methods and exploring different approaches to transfer new knowledge. Including gamification-based approaches, enabling participants to improve data management training in the life sciences. These knowledge will be applied in the FFPW USB and the CENAKVA work environment.

8th to the 20th of September, I attended the International Passive Sampling Workshop (IPSW) conference in Utrecht, Netherlands. I presented the results of our research as a lecture, „Quo Vadis? Perspectives of POCIS passive samplers exploitation for multiple purposes in the examples“.

22nd to the 27th of September, I participated in the conference Environmental Dimension of Antibiotic Resistance (EDAR6) in Gothenburg, Sweden, with the poster „Nontargeted LC-HRMS monitoring data: Fast and reliable way to find compounds and hot spots for prioritization. “ Prof. Mats Tysklind and Dr. Holly Tipper presented results based on our cooperation in the field of AMR in their lectures:     Prioritize Organic Antibacterial Biocides Of Potential Concern In The Aquatic Environment By Combining Database Information And High Resolution Mass Spectrometry Data Mining and Gammarus Pulex Microbiome: A Novel Tool For Measuring The Effects Of Catchment-scale Pollution On Antimicrobial Resistance In The Environment, respectively.

Petr Cisar, Jan Urban and Stepan Papacek participated in the annual meeting of the Aquaexcel3.0 project organized in Heraklion, Greece (18-20.10). The progress in WP4 and WP6 was presented to the partners. The meeting was used to discuss the next steps in the processing of data from biosensors and planning of the experiments in sea cages and tanks focused on welfare monitoring.

On 16-17.10.2023 we, consisting of Petr Císař, Jan Urban and Štěpán Papaček, participated in the meeting of the AQUAEXCEL3.0 project held in Budapest, Hungary. As part of the meeting of project partners, we presented information on the work carried out on camera recordings from tanks for welfare analysis, on the creation of a new method of processing telemetry data and on the simulation of flow in tanks for the virtual laboratory. The work of other people from the faculty was presented by the heads of individual research packages.

I worked in the laboratory of Fish Immunology, Department of Fish Biology, Research Center for Fisheries and Aquaculture (HAKI), Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences (MATE), Szarvas, Hungary from 15^th February 2023 to 30^th June 2023. During 136 days internship, I mainly performed sampling tissues including liver, head kidney, and spleen, RNA extraction, making cDNA by reverse transcription, testing RNA integrity by gel electrophoresis, assembling real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) reactions, qPCR data evaluation, measuring lysozyme enzyme activity and total protein levels from blood plasma. Moreover, I joined one of the lab members to assist the measurement process of the liver antioxidant and intestine digestive enzymes activity. Besides, I attended a workshop to see the isolation of leukocytes from common carp head kidneys and measure the respiratory burst activity and nitric oxide production of the cells. I learned the artificial propagation of European catfish and I updated my knowledge about common carp artificial reproduction. Moreover, I participated in rotifer sampling from common carp rearing ponds. I would like to acknowledge Erasmus+, PPSŘ project, and Laboratory of controlled reproduction and intensive fish culture for financial support.

From 27^th November to 2^nd December 2022, representatives of the FFPW USB, Vladimír Žlábek, Michal Hojdekr and Martin Vlček, took part in internships aimed at strengthening the expertise and know-how in the areas of Management, International affairs and development, Internal evaluation and Project management. The internship took place at the Jadavpur university and West Bengal University of Animal and Fisheries Science, India.

From December 11 to 16, 2022, representatives of the FFPW USB (Antonín Kouba, Martin Pšenička and Vlastimil Stejskal) took part in the internship aimed at evaluating the quality of educational and research institutions. The internship took place at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University College Cork, Ireland.