Student recruitment trip to Novi Sad

On Monday, January 23rd, Eszti, Jelena, Zoran and Ákos visited Dr. Željko Popović at the Department of Biology and Ecology of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. The purpose of the visit was to meet with two candidates for the Hungarian state scholarship "Stipendium Hungaricum" and discuss with them the possibilities of pursuing their PhD in Hungary. It was agreed that the two candidates (Nataša Cvetković and Jovana Lovren) will visit our lab in Hungary in March for a one-month training in fish biotechnology. We enjoyed the wonderful hospitality of our Serbian colleagues and looking forward to a continued collaboration.

Meeting with the candidates at the Department of Biology and Ecology (from left to right: Dr. Željko Popović, Jelena, Nataša Cvetković, Jovana Lovren, Zoran, Eszti and Ákos)

Air spawning trial in Tolmin

Ákos has participated in a trial of air spawning of marble trout (Salmo marmoratus) at the fish farm of the Angling Club of Tolmin conducted by Dr. Radosław Kowalski and his team – Beata Cejko, Sylwia Judycka and Michał Blitek – from the Institute of Animal Reproduction and Food Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Olsztyn, Poland on January 15-18th, 2017. Dr. Kowalski has applied and perfected this technology in many salmonid species previously and it worked fine on the marble trout, as well (see the video below). Air spawning is claimed to be less stressful for the fish than manual stripping, results in higher egg quality and more complete removal of eggs from the body cavity.
In addition to the air spawning trial, experiments were conducted on the cryopreservation of marble trout sperm. Information was exchanged by the Slovenian and Polish partners on the production of fish products such as trout caviar and trout pâté. Finally, we enjoyed the company of our Polish partners at our department in Gödöllő, too. We conducted experiments on the cryopreservation of common carp sperm which was also a good test of our carp broodstock for sexual maturity.
We would like to thank our partners in Slovenia and Poland for this truly international cooperation. We very much hope to continue this work in the future.

Radek preparing marble trout caviar while Robi from the Angling Club of Tolmin is taking notes

Happy customers tasting marble trout caviar

The team on the famous Napoleon bridge in Kobarid 

High expectations from cryopreserved common carp sperm in Gödöllő

Radek showing their well-equipped laboratory-van

our collegues from the Department of Aquaculture listening to Radek's presentation

sightseeing in Budapest (Michał, Eszti, Radek, Sylwia, Beata, Jelena, with the statue of the Hungarian poet Attila József)

Happy Holidays!

The end of the year is nearing. It has been a very exciting one for our group with successes, exciting travels, lots of work, nice publications but also sad losses. We are looking forward to the new year with hope for more interesting discoveries, meetings with fellow scientists and friends and new collaborations. We wish everyone Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year of 2017!

Colleagues from Slovenia visited our lab

Dr Simona Sušnik-Bajec and Dr Aleš Snoj from the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, spent one week in our as a part of our join project regarding transplantation of  spermatogonia among salmonid species. This time we checked success of transplantation which we did during autumn. 

Simona preparing everything for work

Preparing the sample for checking

Aleš collecting samples for molecular analysis 

Team work

Cute company

Broodstock review

On Friday December 9th, we reviewed our common carp broodstock. Fish were harvested from their tank, anesthetized, their PIT tags were scanned and then their standard length and weight was measured and their sex determined. The goal of this review was to check their growth since June as well as to determine which individual is ready for spawning. Most fish have doubled their size and males already have sperm. We hope to attempt the first spawning in February.

Our colleague Balázs and Zoran are harvesting fish from the tank

The sex of fish was checked by the presence of sperm

All fish are weighed and measured before sex determination

Colleagues from Vodnany visited our lab

Dr Vojtěch Kašpar and Roman Franěk from the Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters, University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic, spent one week in our lab for joint research on carp testis cryopreservation.  

 preparing cryomedia

 cutting tissue

more cutting

weighting of tissue pieces

one happy bunch with controlled rate freezer

filtering

Interreg-IPA CBC Hungary-Serbia

Jelena and Zoran participated in Info Day for Interreg-IPA CBC Hungary-Serbia Programme which was organized in Subotica (Serbia). There were representatives of Joint and national Secretariats who explained details regarding the programme, project call and application process.

representative of the Serbian Secretariat from Subotica

representative of the Joint Secretariat from Budapest

explaining application process 

Short term scientific mission (STSM) in Valencia

Timi and Eszti spent 10 days at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, working with the research team of Dr. Juan Asturiano. Our stay was financed by the AQUAGAMETE COST action.

The main topic of our investigations was the comparison of protocols for European eel (Anguilla anguilla) sperm cryopreservation, furthermore new developments in this topic were also carried out. The results of these experiments are going to be published in the JoVE, for this purpose all the methods were recorded on video.

Timi injecting an eel with hormon (to induce spermiation)

Eszti and Germán during stripping

sperm stripping

recording the steps of cryopreservation

Victor evaluating the sperm motility with CASA

cryopreservation

weekend lab meeting at the central market of Valencia
(from left to right: Timi, Luz, Johnny, Laura :), Chris, Filipa)

Joint meeting of the 22nd International Congress of Zoology (ICZ) & the 87th meeting of the Zoological Society of Japan (ZSJ)

Ákos has participated at the Joint meeting of the 22nd International Congress of Zoology (ICZ) & the 87th meeting of the ZSJ that was held on 14-19th November, 2016 at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Okinawa, Japan. The meeting had more than 700 registered attendees from all over the world. A symposium on the reproduction of aquatic organisms was organized by Dr. Yoshida Manabu where representatives of the COST Action FA1205 AQUAGAMETE (including Dr. Juan F. Asturiano from Spain, Dr. Martin Pšenička from Czech Republic and Ákos) had the opportunities to present their results as well as those of the Action. A gigantic poster session of the conference with 728 posters was also organized at the Okinawa Convention Center.

The Fish Reproduction Group was represented at the meeting with the following works:

Oral presentations:

Juan F. Asturiano, María J. Bayarri, Ákos Horváth: AQUAGAMETE COST Action. Resume of activities and results 2013-2016
Akos Horvath, Eszter Kasa, Juan F Asturiano: Sperm cryopreservation and vitrification of aquatic species

Posters:

Carina Caldeira, Ákos Horváth, Dusan Jesensek, Branko Glamuzina, Carles Soler: Sperm kinetic assessment of Adriatic grayling (T. thymallus) and European flat oyster (O. edulis)
Eszter Kasa, Dusan Jesensek, Gergely Bernath, Timea Kollar, Zoltan Bokor, Bela Urbanyi, Akos Horvath: Vitrification of the sperm of salmonid species

AQUAGAMETE reunion in Okinawa: Dr. Luz Perez (Spain), Dr. Martin Pšenička (Czech Republic), Ákos, Dr. Juan F. Asturiano (Spain)

Ákos presenting a poster by the Fish Reproduction Group

A working dinner with friends

22th Conference on Animal Reproduction, 11-12. November 2016

Timi and Eszti has participated on the 22th Conference on Animal Reproduction in  Kecskemét, Hungary. The official language of the conference was Hungarian, altough we had very interesting speakers from Spain and United Arab Emirates as well.

Timi and Eszti

The new results of our research group were presented by one oral and one poster presentation:

Kollár Tímea, Cserepes Judit, Szabó Katalin, Faragó Bernadett, Budai Csilla, Pribenszky Csaba, Bernáth Gergely, Csenki Zsolt, Horváth Ákos: Storage of fish embryos on low temperatures. (oral presentation) 22th Conference on Animal Reproduction, Kecskemét, Hungary,11-12. November 2016, Book of abstracts p. 20. (In Hungarian)

KÁSA ESZTER, LUJIC JELENA, MARINOVIC ZORAN, KOLLÁR TÍMEA, URBÁNYI BÉLA, HORVÁTH ÁKOS: Opportunities of gene conservation in Zebrafish (Danio rerio): sperm- and gonadal stem cell vitrification. (poster presentation) 22th Conference on Animal Reproduction, Kecskemét, Hungary,11-12. November 2016, Book of abstracts p. 27. (In Hungarian)

Timi presenting her results

Eszti with her poster

Farewell to Ági

Ági is leaving our group and will continue to pursue her scientific carreer at a Lendület group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences coordinated by Dr. Balázs Győrffy as of November 2nd, 2016. It was great to work with you, Ági, we will miss you a lot. We wish you a lot of success in your work!

Austrian-Hungarian Joint Project

Ákos and Ági from the group and Kovács Balázs and Guti Csaba from the Fish Genetics Group of our Department have been participating in an Austrian-Hungarian Joint Project entilted to genetic analyses of brown trout populations in Danube region. The collaboration partner are Steven Weiss an d his group in University of Graz.

All of us visited their lab in this October. Ági and Csaba have spent there two weeks to extend their analyses for their doctoral research. Ákos and Balázs have visited them for two days to discuss about more collaboration.

University of Graz

Visiting of fish rooms

At the beautiful Mur river

After the nice paprika chicken dinner (thanks to Csaba)

7th AQUAGAMETE Training School: Fish proteomics

Two members of our group, Timi and Gergő have participated as trainees at the 7th AQUAGAMETE Training School entitled "Fish proteomics" from 26/09/16 to 30/09/16 in Olsztyn, Poland. Training School was organized by Professor Andrzej Ciereszko (Institute of Animal Reproduction and Food Research of Polsih Academy of Sciences) and supported by COST Action FA1205: AQUAGAMETE.

The participants of the Training School

Beside the very interesting lectures, which were held by Professor Ciereszko, Professor Serhiy Souchelnytskyi (College of Medicine, Qatar University) and Dr. Thomas Fröhlich (Laboratory of Functional Genome Analysis, Gene Center of the University of Munich), we have gained experience in protein sample preparations from different fish tissue, electrophoresis, computer analysis of gels and mass spectrometry identification of proteins by the help of the Training Team (Dr. Mariola Dietrich, Dr. Joanna Nynca, Dr. Mariola Słowińska, M.Sc. Agnieszka Mostek and M.Sc. Błażej Westfalewicz). On the last day of the Training School, each trainees have reported their results, experiences and conclusions.

Starting electrophoresis in the first dimension (isoelectrofocusing)

Preparation SDS-gels for the second dimension 

SDS-gel

Mass spectrometry identification of proteins

During lecture