We did a little bit of work with the early version of our FIT-CHIP a couple of years ago. One of the things that we did see in the fish was a shift in the timing of osmoregulation. Because the virus infects the gill—and we've been able to show that through viral imaging under the microscope as well as our molecular work—we are concerned that the virus may disrupt the ability of fish to shift to becoming full smolts. If it does disrupt their ability to smolt, it could disrupt their ability to adapt to the salinity in the environment, and that in and of itself is a huge detriment to survival.
In all our work in FIT-CHIP's data thus far, osmoregulatory failure and osmotic stress appear to be the most closely linked with survival, of all the stressors we've looked at—more so even than temperature.