AQUASERV Conference

Chris Bowler is Director of Research at the CNRS and Director of the Plant and Algal Genomics Laboratory at the Institut de biologie de l'École normale supérieure in Paris. He obtained his PhD from Ghent University in Belgium, followed by postdoctoral studies at Rockefeller University in New York. In 1994, he set up his own laboratory working on signaling in higher plants and marine diatoms at the Stazione Zoologicade Naples, Italy, and in 2002 took up his current position in Paris.

He has been a member of EMBO since 1995, received the CNRS Silver Medal in 2010, ERC Advanced Awards in 2012 and 2018 and the Fondation Louis D. de l'Institut de France Prize in 2015. In 2018, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Agriculture.

His main research interest is understanding the response of plants and marine diatoms to environmental signals, through functional and comparative genomics. He is one of the scientific coordinators of the Tara Océan project, which aims to explore the biodiversity, ecology and evolution of plankton in the world's oceans.

GROUP LEADER of Reproduction and Developmental Biology at the Institute of Marine Research (Norway).

The field of interest is functional genomics in Atlantic salmon, with a focus on reproductive mechanisms. Gene editing is used to knock out (KO) genes in Atlantic salmon to explore molecular mechanisms related to the reproductive system, in particular germ cell specification and early sexual development, and we have produced sterile fish by ablation of the primordial germ cells or by preventing maturation. Both aims explore fields which can result in sterility models for aquaculture that could solve major bottlenecks related to un-wanted sexual maturation and genetic interactions with wild populations. The wild genome pool of Atlantic salmon has been explored in recent years explored to identify genetic regions under selection for primarily reproductive traits, such as time at maturity and smoltification. However studies have also revealed genetic regions /sweeps that probably confer traits associated with disease resistance, behaviour, sea water adaption and feed metabolism.

Research group leader in Biology of Reproduction and Environmental Epigenetics at Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

PhD in Biology from the University of Barcelona. Doctoral training in Canada and postdoctoral training in the United States. His research focuses on the study of fish sex determination and differentiation, sexual systems, and environmental and developmental epigenetics. He has edited the book “La Biologia d’Ahir i d’Avui” and co-edited the books “Sex Control in Aquaculture” and “Epigenetics in Aquaculture”. His publications in international journals have been cited over ten thousand times, placing him among the top 2% of the world's most cited authors. He is currently working on the development of epigenetic biomarkers for application to aquatic resource management and conservation biology. In 2013 he received the Jacumar Award for best research in aquaculture. In 2019 he became a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona, and in 2020 he received the Research Award from the College of Biologists of Catalonia.