Thursday 8th November, Estefanía Paredes, responsible of the Marine Biological Funtional Preservation Service from ECIMAT, presented in a conference of the Café con Sal cycle, the conference “Comparative criopreservation of Molluscs”.
The Marine Biological Functional Preservation Service from ECIMAT is doing important progresses in the criopreservation of molluscs. The work developed is included into the research activity “Cryobanking of marine organisms” of the project ” Assemble plus” (Pogram H2020). The main objective of this activity is to achieve sucessfull cryopreservation of different cell types of marine cells, among them molluscs.
The service has developed a cryopreservation protocol for the clam Venerupis corrugata for the first time and have studied both their sensitivity to cryoprotecting agents and the short term survival post cryopreservation. The reserchers have been working actively on mussel Mytilus galloprovincillis in order to study the sensitivity to cryoprotecting agents. They also have studied the long term post cryo survival and have produced seed for the first time. Working with different molluscs is allowing them to obtain comparisons between species and detect strong and week points of the process that will help them imporve the protocols and increase survivals. The applications of this biotechnology are wide, from acuiculture, research, repopulation efforts or fisheries management.
The Marine Biological Funtional Preservation Service from ECIMAT is where Pablo Heres is carrying out his research on molluncs, predoctoral student of the research group of Coastal Ecology from the University of Vigo, directed bunder the direction of Estefanía Paredes and Jesús S. Troncoso. During the conference, Estefanía Paredes will present the methodology and the main results obtained to date and last developments.