The high economic impact of virus in aquaculture rises the need for the urgent development of prophylactic solutions to mitigate economic and animal losses. However, a better understand of fish basic antiviral mechanisms is necessary in order to contribute to this endeavor.

Hence, the exploratory AQUAVIP project,   intends to generate the tools to the creation of innovative and sustainable strategies to improve fish antiviral response and resistance to viral pathogens. The focus on viperin is justified by the recent and multi-action mechanisms described for the protein, that point to its central role in the host antiviral response. In an exploratory and multidisciplinary approach, the AQUAVIP project uses up to date methodologies to: i) create the tools necessary to study viperin role as antiviral effector and modulator of acute phase and innate immune responses activated by a viral pathogen; ii) evaluate the pathways associated to the transcriptional regulation of viperin as well as the pathways induced by viperin itself. Also, since the principal activity described for viperin is acting as a chain terminator by catalyzing the conversation of CTP to ddhCTP, a look on the production of both nucleotides in response to a virus will be checked; iii) assess the in vivo constitutive and induced viperin expression and the acute phase and innate immune mechanisms activated in response to VHS infection at the local and systemic level.

This project is financed by national funds through the FCT – Foundation for Science and the Technology, IP, EXPL/CVT-CVT/0458/2021.