The Predoctoral Researcher of the Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology of Salamanca (IRNASA-CSIC) and student of the doctoral program “Health and development in the tropics” of the University of Salamanca, Spain, Ana Laura Cano, carried out an internship, in the line “Aquaculture Genomics” of the Interdisciplinary Center for Aquaculture Research (INCAR).
His focus of study is the tick-host interaction and the development of multi-antigen vaccines as a control method against infestations of these parasites. Specifically, it works with two species of ticks: Ornithodoros moubata (distributed in eastern and southern Africa) and Ornithodoros erraticus (mainly present in the Mediterranean basin), main vectors of diseases such as African Swine Fever and Human Relapsing Fever.
“At IRNASA we are interested in studying the tick-host interface using transcriptomic data. Until now we have had the limitation that we do not have the necessary infrastructure to carry out this work. Additionally, we were interested in learning about new bioinformatics strategies and their use in the study of parasite-host interaction. This is why we were interested in carrying out this internship at the INCAR Aquaculture Biotechnology and Genomics Laboratory, since they have extensive experience in this area, in addition to having the necessary means to carry out the analyses”, explained the intern.
The positive assessment of his experience based on what he learned during his stay at INCAR reinforces the importance of scientific collaboration between centers from different countries and from other areas. “Collaboration in science seems vital to me, especially among young scientists; since it allows to be nourished by new knowledge and to acquire other perspectives that contribute to the investigation. In the case of this internship, despite the fact that we work with different parasites, we can learn a lot about what other laboratories do and thus incorporate other points of view that help us solve our objective”, finishes Cano.
