18 research outputs found
Parasites and other infectious agents in marine finfish and shellfish species posing a hazard to human health (ToR b)
Complete genome sequence of eelpout rhabdovirus (ERV) identified by deep sequencing of viral RNA
Report of the Working Group on Pathology and Diseases of Marine Organisms (WGPDMO):Annex 6: Provide a review of new diagnostic techniques for Francisella sp. and progress in vaccine development, and update on the susceptibility of species other than cod to this pathogen (ToR b)
Report of the Working Group on Pathology and Diseases of Marine Organisms (WGPDMO):Annex 8: Review of Francisella sp. and visceral granulomatosis in farmed cod and the potential for disease interaction between wild and farmed cod (ToR d)
Marteilia refringens and Marteilia pararefringens sp. nov. are distinct parasites of bivalves and have different European distributions
Marteilia refringens causes marteiliosis in oysters, mussels and other bivalve molluscs. This parasite previously comprised two species, M. refringens and Marteilia maurini, which were synonymized in 2007 and subsequently referred to as M. refringens ‘O-type’ and ‘M-type’. O-type has caused mass mortalities of the flat oyster Ostrea edulis. We used high throughput sequencing and histology to intensively screen flat oysters and mussels (Mytilus edulis) from the UK, Sweden and Norway for infection by both types and to generate multi-gene datasets to clarify their genetic distinctiveness. Mussels from the UK, Norway and Sweden were more frequently polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-positive for M-type (75/849) than oysters (11/542). We did not detect O-type in any northern European samples, and no histology-confirmed Marteilia-infected oysters were found in the UK, Norway and Sweden, even where co-habiting mussels were infected by the M-type. The two genetic lineages within ‘M. refringens’ are robustly distinguishable at species level. We therefore formally define them as separate species: M. refringens (previously O-type) and Marteilia pararefringens sp. nov. (M-type). We designed and tested new Marteilia-specific PCR primers amplifying from the 3’ end of the 18S rRNA gene through to the 5.8S gene, which specifically amplified the target region from both tissue and environmental samples