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Jun 7, 2018

Salmon grower will start commercial production this year

Make History, this year’s BIO Convention theme, is what AquaBounty Technologies has been doing ever since it was created in 1991. Incidentally, that was two years before BIO was founded. Originally named AF Protein (for antifreeze protein, the original focus of research), the Company was created to commercialize a fast-growing Atlantic salmon. This salmon, created using recombinant DNA technology by a team of scientists based at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in St. John’s, NL, Canada, grows to market size (4-5 kg) in 18 months, instead of the 30-36 months it takes for conventional farmed Atlantic salmon. The basis for the rapid growth is the AquAdvantage gene construct. This single gene and promoter sequence, when integrated into the Atlantic salmon genome, enabled the Atlantic salmon to grow continuously to adult size in record time, with the added advantage of using 25% less feed. This product was named AquAdvantage® Salmon (AAS).  Read the article.