Prof. Sam Martin
Director of the Scottish Fish Immunology Research Centre (SFIRC) at the University of Aberdeen
Sam Martin is Director of the Scottish Fish Immunology Research Centre (SFIRC) at the University of Aberdeen. He is also currently the Director of Research for the School of Biological Sciences at UoA.
Sam’s lab has been at the forefront of molecular biological approaches for the analysis of health and nutrition in both Atlantic salmon and Rainbow trout, with an emphasis on identifying differentially expressed genes related to immune function. The research programmes cover both fundamental questions in fish health and projects that are directly relevant to the aquaculture industry. He has developed tools for high-throughput transcriptomics in salmonid fish, specifically by micro-array, but more recently using RNAseq single-cell transcriptomics.
In the past few years there has been an emphasis on mucosal health, with a number of live projects investigating gill, intestine and skin mucosal health. As part of investigating the regulation of immune response, his group has worked on gene editing using crispr/cas9 gene editing.
Sam's lab has received funding from UKRI, the EU and SAIC, as well as a number of industry-funded projects.
Selected publications
- Lorgen-Ritchie, M., Chalmers, L., Clarkson, M., Taylor, J. F., Migaud, H., Martin, S. A Time is a stronger predictor of microbiome community composition than tissue in external mucosal surfaces of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) reared in a semi-natural freshwater environment. Aquaculture, vol. 566, 739211 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2022.739211.
- Krol, E., Noguera, P., Shaw, S., Costelloe, E., Gajardo, K., Valdenegro, V., Bickerdike, R., Douglas, A., Martin, S. A. M. Integration of Transcriptome, Gross Morphology and Histopathology in the Gill of Sea Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar): Lessons from Multi-site Sampling Frontiers in Genetics, vol. 11, 610. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2020.00610