Animal science
Research activities carried out in this Division can be summarised as follows:
- Reproductive biotechnologies for improving fertility, animal breeding and preventing breeds extinction;
- Identification of innate immunity genes in human, bovine and other species, conferring resistance/susceptibility to pathogens;
- Alternative therapies (antimicrobial peptides and bacteriophage therapy) to conventional antibiotic treatment;
- Vaccines production;
- Biosensors as a tool for diagnosis of food contamination;
- MicroRNA as a biomarker for the diagnosis of infectious diseases in cattle;
- Comparative proteomics to detect changes associated to structural and ultrastructural muscle variations;
- Assessment of animal welfare at farm level;
- Effect of nutrition on: organoleptic, nutritional and security characteristics of livestock product; environment; livestock-farm efficiency;
- Effect of genetic and environmental factors on meat organoleptic qualities;
- Nutritional and organoleptic attributes in food products from local breeds;
- Re-use of nutrients from treated waste water to grow microalgae for biomass production;
- Diversification of farmed fish species in water recycling systems;
- Molecular genetics for the quali-quantitative improvement of the animal products.