Participation of IMBBC-HCMR in the Aqua-FAANG final Conference, 11-13 October 2023, Edinburgh, UK
In the final conference of the Aqua-FAANG project (EU H2020), oral presentations were given by IMBBS researchers Dr. Elena Sarropoulou on the “Dynamic gene expression and regulation during gilthead sea bream development” and Dr. Costas Tsigenopoulos on “Genome functional annotation of host defense response in gilthead sea breamthrough chromatin accessibility and differential gene expression assays”. 
The AquaFAANG final Conference brought together over 80 in-person participants, permitted knowledge exchange, and facilitated an understanding of variation in traits of commercial relevance, exploiting comparative approaches to enhance transferability of findings.
The project “Advancing European Aquaculture by Genome Functional Annotation”, (www.aqua-faang.eu) is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme. Fourteen academic and research partners, as well as 10 aquaculture companies and stakeholders joined forces since May 2019 to improve our understanding of genome function in the six most commercially important European farmed fishes, namely Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, European sea bass, gilthead sea bream, turbot and common carp. This engagement allowed the co-development of commercially relevant outputs with long lasting impacts in European aquaculture through the generation of genome-wide functional annotation maps for each species.