Stress, caused by abiotic and pathogenic biotic factors has been a major hindering factor affecting the growth and health of aquaculture animals. In fact, these agents have been responsible for causing serious disease outbreaks in high-valued fishes and shrimps. Over the past 12 years, I have been researching on finding holistic and sustainable strategies to control diseases in these animals, and this was based on addressing mutliple disease targets rather than single disease target. In particular, my research interests focused on the 1) development of novel health-care products (based on for e.g: heat shock protein inducers, polyphenols, immunostimulants) and functional feed; 2) probing the biological activity of these products in different host–microbe systems, such as for instance bacterial infections in crustaceans and fishes; and 3) study the role of epigenetics in health and nutritional programming. My research is aimed at commercially important farmed aquatic animals but I also use gnotobiotic Artemia as a convenient testing organism.
