Verónica Barra, PhD. in Sciences/ Cellular and Molecular Biology student, at Universidad Austral de Chile (UACh) and member of the “Animal Health in Marine Environment” line at the INCAR Center, was one of the 20 students awarded with the “Thesis Funding in I+D+I+EBCT, Female Leadership Line” grant, given by the Faculty of Sciences at UACh. This grant is part of the Science 2030 Project, a project that brings together a consortium of 6 universities from southern Chile.
The thesis titled “The Role of Macrophage Differentiation in the Response to Piscirickettsia salmonis and its Association with Epigenetic Marks in Genes Associated with Innate Immunity in Salmo salar” was sponsored by the INCAR Principal Investigator, Dr. Jaime Figueroa. The overall objective of the project is to identify epigenetic marks in promoter regions of genes involved in innate immune response in differentiated macrophages (M1 and M2) of Salmo salar, and determine their association with the response to P. salmonis.