This award will support a twelve month long-term visit by Professor Larry J. Miller, Department of Biology, Gannon University, Erie, Pennsylvania, to Japan for a cooperative research project with Professors Tsuneo Moriya and Yoko Miyashita, Department of Biology, Sapporo Medical College. The researchers plan to undertake immunocytochemical investigations of AVT and CRF immunoreactive perikarya and fibers in the brain of juvenile salmon and to correlate changes in AVAT and CRF immunoreactivity with physiological markers indicative of seawater readiness. The research will be carried out on the Chum salmon which is an important commercial species in Japan. Professors Moriya and Miyashita have an established research program using Chum salmon. The researchers will be looking at the timing of the salmon's migratory phase, the environmental and hormonal control of migration and the control of certain accompanying physiological changes such as effects on skin pigmentation. The research results should provide answers to important biological questions fundamental to an understanding of salmonid physiology which are of real significance to salmonid aquaculture. The Sapporo Medical Laboratory is well equipped for the experiments. They stock salmon in both fresh and salt water and have also devised a circular tank to create simulating current flow. Because Chum salomn are unique in that they mature to smolt phase within three months of hatching it allows enough time for all the planned experiments to be completed during Professor Miller's visit to the Sapporo Laboratory. All of the researchers are anxiously looking forward to this project and it is believed that this is the beginning of a collaboration that will continue past this formal agreement.
