Red mark syndrome: Is the aquaculture water microbiome a keystone for understanding the disease aetiology?

Aquaculture significantly contributes to the growing demand for food worldwide. However, diseases associated with intensive aquaculture conditions, especially the skin related syndromes, may have significant implications on fish health and industry. In farmed rainbow trout, red mark syndrome (RMS), which consists of multiple skin lesions, currently lacks recognized aetiological agents, and increased efforts are needed to elucidate the onset of these conditions. Most of the past studies were focused on analyzing skin lesions, but no study focused on water, a medium constantly interacting with fish. Indeed, water tanks are environmental niches colonized by microbial communities, which may be implicated in the onset of the disease. Here, we present the results of water and sediment microbiome analyses performed in an RMS-affected aquaculture facility, bringing new knowledge about the environmental microbiomes harbored under these conditions. On the whole, no significant differences in the bacterial community structure were reported in RMS-affected tanks compared to the RMS-free ones. However, we highlighted significant differences in microbiome composition when analyzing different samples source (i.e., water and sediments). Looking at the finer scale, we measured significant changes in the relative abundances of specific taxa in RMS-affected tanks, especially when analyzing water samples. Our results provide worthwhile insight into a mostly uncharacterized ecological scenario, aiding future studies on the aquaculture built environment for disease prevention and monitoring

Aquaculture ecosystem microbiome at the water-fish interface: the case-study of rainbow trout fed with Tenebrio molitor novel diets

Background: Sustainable aquaculture relies on multiple factors, including water quality, fish diets, and farmed fish. Replacing fishmeal (FM) with alternative protein sources is key for improving sustainability in aquaculture and promoting fish health. Indeed, great research efforts have been made to evaluate novel feed formulations, focusing especially on the effects on the fish gut microbiome. Few studies have explored host-environment interactions. In the present study, we evaluated the influence of novel insect-based (Tenebrio molitor) fish diets on the microbiome at the water-fish interface in an engineered rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) farming ecosystem. Using 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding, we comprehensively analyzed the microbiomes of water, tank biofilm, fish intestinal mucus, fish cutis, and feed samples. Results: Core microbiome analysis revealed the presence of a highly reduced core shared by all sample sources, constituted by Aeromonas spp., in both the control and novel feed test groups. Network analysis showed that samples were clustered based on the sample source, with no significant differences related to the feed formulation tested. Thus, the different diets did not seem to affect the environment (water and tank biofilm) and fish (cutis and intestinal mucus) microbiomes. To disentangle the contribution of feed at a finer scale, we performed a differential abundance analysis and observed differential enrichment/impoverishment in specific taxa, comparing the samples belonging to the control diet group and the insect-based diet group. Conclusions: Omic exploration of the water-fish interface exposes patterns that are otherwise undetected. These data demonstrate a link between the environment and fish and show that subtle but significant differences are caused by feed composition. Thus, the research presented here is a step towards positively influencing the aquaculture environment and its microbiome

Viruslab: A tool for customized sars-cov-2 data analysis

Since the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to viral data analysis and connected host disease diagnostic methods. We propose VirusLab, a flexible system for analysing SARS-CoV-2 viral sequences and relating them to metadata or clinical information about the host. VirusLab capitalizes on two existing resources: ViruSurf, a database of public SARS-CoV-2 sequences supporting metadata-driven search, and VirusViz, a tool for visual analysis of search results. VirusLab is designed for taking advantage of these resources within a server-side architecture that: (i) covers pipelines based on approaches already in use (ARTIC, Galaxy) but entirely cutomizable upon user request; (ii) predigests analysis of raw sequencing data from different platforms (Oxford Nanopore and Illumina); (iii) gives access to public archives datasets; (iv) supplies user-friendly reporting – making it a tool that can also be integrated into a business environment. VirusLab can be installed and hosted within the premises of any organization where information about SARS-CoV-2 sequences can be safely integrated with information about hosts (e.g., clinical metadata). A system such as VirusLab is not currently available in the landscape of similar providers: our results show that VirusLab is a powerful tool to generate tabular/graphical and machine readable reports that can be integrated in more complex pipelines. We foresee that the proposed system can support many research-oriented and therapeutic scenarios within hospitals or the tracing of viral sequences and their mutational processes within organizations for viral surveillance

MetaCOXI: an integrated collection of metazoan mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit-I DNA sequences

Nucleotide sequences reference collections or databases are fundamental components in DNA barcoding and metabarcoding data analyses pipelines. In such analyses, the accurate taxonomic assignment is a crucial aspect, relying directly on the availability of comprehensive and curated reference sequence collection and its taxonomy information. The currently wide use of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit-I (COXI) as a standard DNA barcode marker in metazoan biodiversity studies highlights the need to shed light on the availability of the related relevant information from different data sources and their eventual integration. To adequately address data integration process, many aspects should be markedly considered starting from DNA sequence curation followed by taxonomy alignment with solid reference backbone and metadata harmonization according to universal standards. Here, we present MetaCOXI, an integrated collection of curated metazoan COXI DNA sequences with their associated harmonized taxonomy and metadata. This collection was built on the two most extensive available data resources, namely the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) and the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD). The current release contains more than 5.6 million entries (3 9.1% unique to BOLD, 3.6% unique to ENA, and 572% shared between both), their related taxonomic classification based on NCBI reference taxonomy, and their available main metadata relevant to environmental DNA studies, such as geographical coordinates, sampling country and host species. MetaCOXI is available in standard universal formats ('fasta' for sequences & 'tsv' for taxonomy and metadata), which can be easily incorporated in standard or specific DNA barcoding and/or metabarcoding data analysis pipelines

Exploring Changes in the Microbiota of Aedes albopictus: Comparison Among Breeding Site Water, Larvae, and Adults

The mosquito body hosts highly diverse microbes, which influence different physiological traits of both larvae and adults. The composition of adult mosquito microbiota is tightly linked to that of larvae, which are aquatic and feed on organic detritus, algae and prokaryotic microorganisms present in their breeding sites. Unraveling the ecological features of larval habitats that shape the structure of bacterial communities and their interactions with the mosquito host is still a poorly investigated topic in the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus, a highly invasive species that is vector of numerous arboviruses, including Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika viruses. In this study, we investigated the composition of the bacterial community present in the water from a natural larval breeding site in which we separately reared wild-collected larvae and hatched eggs of the Foshan reference laboratory strain. Using sequence analysis of bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicons, we comparatively analyzed the microbiota of the larvae and that of adult mosquitoes, deriving information about the relative impact of the breeding site water on shaping mosquito microbiota. We observed a higher bacterial diversity in breeding site water than in larvae or adults, irrespective of the origin of the sample. Moreover, larvae displayed a significantly different and most diversified microbial community than newly emerged adults, which appeared to be dominated by Proteobacteria. The microbiota of breeding site water significantly increased its diversity over time, suggesting the presence of a dynamic interaction among bacterial communities, breeding sites and mosquito hosts. The analysis of Wolbachia prevalence in adults from Foshan and five additional strains with different geographic origins confirmed the described pattern of dual wAlbA and wAlbB strain infection. However, differences in Wolbachia prevalence were detected, with one strain from La Reunion Island showing up to 18% uninfected individuals. These findings contribute in further understanding the dynamic interactions between the ecology of larval habitats and the structure of host microbiota, as well as providing additional information relative to the patterns of Wolbachia infection

A novel hardware/software codesign methodology based on dynamic reconfiguration with ImpulseC and CoDeveloper

The design of embedded systems has rapidly changed during the last decade. It is possible to identify two main responsible factors: hardware/software codesign and dynamic reconfiguration. The work presented in this paper tries to investigate how to consider the reconfiguration as an explicit dimension in the design flow for embedded systems. This work addresses the challenge introduced by the partial dynamic reconfiguration trying to propose a novel design flow, using the CoDeveloper framework to speedup the design process. The proposed flow allows the designer to define his/her desired specification using a high level design language such as C. Finally, it provides results showing how the proposed flow can be used by the designer to have more information useful in making the correct decisions during the design of his/her embedded system

An integrated flow for the design of hardened circuits on SRAM-based FPGAs

Abstract—This paper presents an enhanced design flow for the implementation of hardened systems on SRAM-based FPGAs, able to cope with the occurrence of Single Event Upsets (SEUs). The framework integrates three strategies independently designed to tackle the problem of SEUs; first a systematic methodology is used to harden the circuit exploiting an enhanced TMRbased technique, coupled with partial dynamic reconfiguration. Then, a robustness analysis is performed to identify possible TMR failures, eventually solved by a specific local re-design of the critical portions of the implementation. We present the overall flow and the benefits of the solution, experimentally evaluated on a realistic circuit