Immune-Related Genes in Aquatic Animals

Dear Colleagues,

As an important branch of immunology, molecular immunology has developed rapidly in recent years. Although it is a young discipline, it plays an important role in immunology. The development of fish’s and shellfish’s molecular immunology has prompted more and more aquatic immune-related genes and regulatory factors to be cloned and studied. In view of the related role of these genes and their regulatory factors in the immune response, scholars around the world are gradually taking the expression of genes as an evaluation index of fish and shellfish health. At the same time, these studies also provide a basis for exploring the molecular mechanisms of fish and shellfish immunity.

In recent years, with the rapid development of high-density industrialized breeding and the increasingly serious pollution of the breeding environment, various diseases that endanger the health of fish and shellfish have appeared one after another, which have brought serious economic losses to fish and shellfish farming. Thereinto, as a low vertebrate, fish have a relatively low specific immune response ability, and nonspecific immune defense plays an important role in resisting the invasion of external pathogens. Similarly, shellfish, as invertebrates, only have a nonspecific immune response ability. There are many kinds of immune-related genes and their regulatory factors involved in the process of fish and shellfish immune defense, but relatively few genes and their regulatory factors have been studied in terms of molecular immunity.

This research topic focuses primarily on the profiling and functional characterization of immune-related genes and their regulatory factors in aquatic animals, including the influence of the immune mode on fish and shellfish immune responses at the gene level and epigenetics: DNA methylation, histone methylation and acetylation, chromatin accessibility, and noncoding RNA. They are abundantly expressed in the genome and play an important role in regulating gene expression. Through the above research, not only can epigenetic molecular markers be found in aquatic organisms, but a link between genetic information and growth, reproduction, and diseases can also be established to improve the breeding of aquatic organisms.

Dr. Feng He
Dr. Lang Gui
Dr. Jiangtao Ou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.