Prof. Lili Chen from Taiwan Ocean University paid a visit to IHB on April 25th, 2017.

Prof. Lili Chen from Taiwan Ocean University paid a visit to Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Science (IHB) on April 25th, 2017. During his visit, he gave an oral presentation with the title of “Study on the early morphogenesis stage of shrimp white spot syndrome virus (WSSV)”. 

Prof. Chen introduced that WSSV outbroke in the 1990s, causing serious economic losses to the world's shrimp aquaculture. Her study focused on the early morphogenesis stage of WSSV. By investigating the interaction between viral protein and receptor, her team found the receptors of WSSV entry and the receptor binding protein.  

Based on these studies, she developed a kind of protein inhibitor which could specifically bind the receptor protein. After adding the protein inhibitor to the feed of shrimp, the mortality of shrimp infected with WSSV effectively decreased. In addition, Prof. Chen also made a brief introduction to the genome size, structure, morphology and invasion mechanism of WSSV.  

Prof. Chen, director of Institute of Marine Biology at Taiwan Ocean University, is mainly engaged in the identification of the receptor of WSSV in shrimp and nervous necrosis virus (NNV) in fish and the development of the vaccine. She also studies anti-viral strategies against WSSV and NNV.