This research travel grant allowed two PhD students: Paula Lima and Celeste Knowles to travel to Melbourne to undertake the Micromon Recombinant DNA Course conducted by Monash University. This course taught essential techniques and skills which may be used by both students in the course of the PhD studies and throughout their careers.

The Monash Recombinant DNA Techniques Course is widely recognised as the leading course of its type in Australia, which consists of a series of tutorials, lectures and hands on laboratory work.

These students aimed to use the techniques learned to investigate amoebic gill disease in Atlantic Salmon which costs the industry $20-25 million annually. Both students have reported that the techniques learned during the course have been used on a regular basis since returning from Melbourne.

RNA interference has emerged as a powerful tool for rapid analysis of gene function in non-model organisms and has the potential to identify candidate targets for interventions against diseases of economic importance to aquaculture. The main purpose of the study was to use functional and comparative genomics approaches to investigate whether the RNAi mechanism has been retained or lost in species from the Neoparamoeba genus.

The results provide strong evidence that both infective and non-infective species from Neoparamoeba spp. have evolutionarily retained key genes involved not only in the canonical RNAi mechanism, but also in the mirNA and PiRNA pathways. Despite being promising, these findings are still preliminary and the reality of applying RNAi technology to develop new treatment strategies against AGD still needs further effort.