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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

A Rapid Phenotype Change In The Pathogen Perkinsus Marinus Was Associated With A Historically Significant Marine Disease Emergence In The Eastern Oyster, Ryan Carnegie, Susan E. Ford, Rita K. Crockett, Peter R. Kingsley-Smith, Lydia M. Bienlien, Lucia S.L. Safi, Laura A. Whitefleet-Smith, Eugene M. Burreson Jun 2021

A Rapid Phenotype Change In The Pathogen Perkinsus Marinus Was Associated With A Historically Significant Marine Disease Emergence In The Eastern Oyster, Ryan Carnegie, Susan E. Ford, Rita K. Crockett, Peter R. Kingsley-Smith, Lydia M. Bienlien, Lucia S.L. Safi, Laura A. Whitefleet-Smith, Eugene M. Burreson

VIMS Articles

The protozoan parasite Perkinsus marinus, which causes dermo disease in Crassostrea virginica, is one of the most ecologically important and economically destructive marine pathogens. The rapid and persistent intensification of dermo in the USA in the 1980s has long been enigmatic. Attributed originally to the effects of multi-year drought, climatic factors fail to fully explain the geographic extent of dermo’s intensification or the persistence of its intensified activity. Here we show that emergence of a unique, hypervirulent P. marinus phenotype was associated with the increase in prevalence and intensity of this disease and associated mortality. Retrospective histopathology of …


Comparative Study Of The Hemolymph Microbiome Between Live And Recently Dead American Lobsters Homarus Americanus, Jibom Jung, Patrick M. Gillevet, Masoumeh Sikaroodi, Jamal Andrews, Bk Song, Jeffrey D. Shields Feb 2021

Comparative Study Of The Hemolymph Microbiome Between Live And Recently Dead American Lobsters Homarus Americanus, Jibom Jung, Patrick M. Gillevet, Masoumeh Sikaroodi, Jamal Andrews, Bk Song, Jeffrey D. Shields

VIMS Articles

Lobsters and other crustaceans do not have sterile hemolymph. Despite this, little is known about the microbiome in the hemolymph of the lobster Homarus americanus. The purpose of this study was to characterize the hemolymph microbiome in lobsters. The lobsters were part of a larger study on the effect of temperature on epizootic shell disease, and several died during the course of the study, providing an opportunity to examine differences in the microbiomes between live and recently dead (1−24 h) animals. The hemolymph microbiomes of live lobsters was different from those in dead animals and both were different from the …


Molecular Mechanism Of Oil Induced Growth Inhibition In Diatoms Using Thalassiosira Pseudonana As The Model Species, Manoj Kamalanathan, Savannah Mapes, Jessica Hillhouse, Et Al Jan 2021

Molecular Mechanism Of Oil Induced Growth Inhibition In Diatoms Using Thalassiosira Pseudonana As The Model Species, Manoj Kamalanathan, Savannah Mapes, Jessica Hillhouse, Et Al

VIMS Articles

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil-spill exposed the microbes of Gulf of Mexico to unprecedented amount of oil. Conclusive evidence of the underlying molecular mechanism(s) on the negative effects of oil exposure on certain phytoplankton species such as Thalassiosira pseudonana is still lacking, curtailing our understanding of how oil spills alter community composition. We performed experiments on model diatom T. pseudonana to understand the mechanisms underpinning observed reduced growth and photosynthesis rates during oil exposure. Results show severe impairment to processes upstream of photosynthesis, such as light absorption, with proteins associated with the light harvesting complex damaged while the pigments were …


Penaeid Shrimp In Chesapeake Bay: Population Growth And Black Gill Disease Syndrome, Troy D. Tuckey, Jillian L. Swinford, Mary C. Fabrizio, Hamish J. Small, Jeffrey D. Shields Jan 2021

Penaeid Shrimp In Chesapeake Bay: Population Growth And Black Gill Disease Syndrome, Troy D. Tuckey, Jillian L. Swinford, Mary C. Fabrizio, Hamish J. Small, Jeffrey D. Shields

VIMS Articles

Since 1991, the number of penaeid shrimp occurring in Virginia waters of Chesapeake Bay has steadily increased, prompting an interest in developing a fishery. Although development of a shrimp fishery in the Chesapeake Bay region could bring economic benefits, the fishery may be hampered by the presence of a disease syndrome known as shrimp black gill (sBG). The objectives of our study were to (1) describe the spatial distribution and abundance patterns of shrimp in Chesapeake Bay, (2) relate relative abundance of shrimp to habitat characteristics, and (3) determine the presence and seasonality of sBG to better understand disease dynamics …


Rhodomonas Pe545 Fluorescence Is Increased By Glycerol, Chanoknard Karnjanapak, I-Shuo Huang, Preyanut Jaroensuk, Et Al Jan 2021

Rhodomonas Pe545 Fluorescence Is Increased By Glycerol, Chanoknard Karnjanapak, I-Shuo Huang, Preyanut Jaroensuk, Et Al

VIMS Articles

Phycobilins are photosynthetic pigments found in three ecologically important groups of algae: cyanobacte- ria, red algae, and cryptophytes. These compounds are covalently attached to proteins, which can be technically difficult to analyze compared with other photosynthetic pigments (e.g., chlorophylls and carotenoids). In this study, glycerol was demonstrated to uncouple PE545 (phycoerythrin 545), the phycobilin complex of Rhodomonas spp., from its role as a light-harvesting pigment: the fluorescence signal was increased 15–34 times, and ETR (electron transport rate) was no longer light-dependent at high light intensities. Glycerol induced fluorescence provided a simple and inexpensive protocol to ascertain the pool size of …


Sperm Repository For A Breeding Program Of The Eastern Oyster Crassostrea Virginica: Sample Collection, Processing, Cryopreservation, And Data Management Plan, H. Yang, Y. Huo, J. C. Yee, S. Rickard, W. C. Walton, E. Saillant Jan 2021

Sperm Repository For A Breeding Program Of The Eastern Oyster Crassostrea Virginica: Sample Collection, Processing, Cryopreservation, And Data Management Plan, H. Yang, Y. Huo, J. C. Yee, S. Rickard, W. C. Walton, E. Saillant

VIMS Articles

The Eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica (Family Ostreidae) is one of the most important fishery and aquaculture species in the U.S. and is a keystone species for coastal reefs. A breeding program was initiated in 2019 to support the fast‐growing aquaculture industry culturing this species in the Gulf of Mexico. Oysters from 17 wild populations in embayment along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast from southwest Florida to the Matagorda Bay, Texas were used as broodstock for the program to maximize genetic diversity in the base population. A sperm repository of the broodstock was established to support the breeding project. The …


The Importance Of Long-Term Data Collection To Understand The Historical And Evolutionary Ecology Of Marine Diseases: The Eastern Oyster Disease System In The Usa, As A Case Study, Ryan Carnegie Jan 2021

The Importance Of Long-Term Data Collection To Understand The Historical And Evolutionary Ecology Of Marine Diseases: The Eastern Oyster Disease System In The Usa, As A Case Study, Ryan Carnegie

VIMS Articles

The epizootics in eastern oysters, Crassostrea virginica, of haplosporidiosis or “MSX” disease caused by Haplosporidium nelsoni, and perkinsosis or “dermo” disease caused by Perkinsus marinus, were two of the most significant marine disease events of the last century. Haplosporidium nelsoni, a protozoan parasite
native to Asian populations of the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas, emerged in Delaware Bay in 1957 and Chesapeake Bay in 1959 (Andrews,1962; Haskin et al., 1966), and in the decades that followed caused major mortality events
from the Mid-Atlantic region of the USA to Atlantic Canada. Perkinsus marinus is a native pathogen, also a protozoan, that had …


Polystyrene Microplastics Reduce Abundance Of Developing B Cells In Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus Mykiss) Primary Cultures, Patty Zwollo, Fatima Quddos, Carey Bagdassarian, Meredith Evans Seeley, Robert Hale, Lauren Abderhalden Jan 2021

Polystyrene Microplastics Reduce Abundance Of Developing B Cells In Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus Mykiss) Primary Cultures, Patty Zwollo, Fatima Quddos, Carey Bagdassarian, Meredith Evans Seeley, Robert Hale, Lauren Abderhalden

VIMS Articles

Environmental microplastic pollution (including polystyrene, PS) may have detrimental effects on the health of aquatic organisms. Accumulation of PS microplastics has been reported to affect innate immune cells and inflammatory responses in fish. To date, knowledge on effects of microplastics on the antibody response is still very limited. Here, we investigated effects of small (0.8–20 μm) PS microplastics on the abundance of B lineage cells in primary cultures of developing immune cells from the anterior kidney of rainbow trout. Both purchased PS microbeads and PS microparticles generated from consumer products were used as microplastic sources. We first show that rainbow …


Virus Shedding Kinetics And Unconventional Virulence Tradeoffs, Andrew R. Wargo, Gael Kurath, Robert J. Scott, Benjamin Kerr Jan 2021

Virus Shedding Kinetics And Unconventional Virulence Tradeoffs, Andrew R. Wargo, Gael Kurath, Robert J. Scott, Benjamin Kerr

VIMS Articles

Tradeoff theory, which postulates that virulence provides both transmission costs and benefits for pathogens, has become widely adopted by the scientific community. Although theoretical literature exploring virulence-tradeoffs is vast, empirical studies validating various assumptions still remain sparse. In particular, truncation of transmission duration as a cost of virulence has been difficult to quantify with robust controlled in vivo studies. We sought to fill this knowledge gap by investigating how transmission rate and duration were associated with virulence for infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). Using host mortality to quantify virulence and viral shedding to …


Marine Harmful Algal Blooms (Habs) In The United States: History, Current Status And Future Trends, Donald M. Anderson, Elizabeth Fensin, Christopher J. Gobler, (...), Juliette L. Smith, Et Al Jan 2021

Marine Harmful Algal Blooms (Habs) In The United States: History, Current Status And Future Trends, Donald M. Anderson, Elizabeth Fensin, Christopher J. Gobler, (...), Juliette L. Smith, Et Al

VIMS Articles

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are diverse phenomena involving multiple. species and classes of algae that occupy a broad range of habitats from lakes to oceans and produce a multiplicity of toxins or bioactive compounds that impact many different resources. Here, a review of the status of this complex array of marine HAB problems in the U.S. is presented, providing historical information and trends as well as future perspectives. The study relies on thirty years (1990–2019) of data in HAEDAT - the IOC-ICES-PICES Harmful Algal Event database, but also includes many other reports. At a qualitative level, the U.S. national HAB …


Aquaculture Reuse Water, Genetic Line, And Vaccination Affect Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus Mykiss) Disease Susceptibility And Infection Dynamics, Jeremy L. Everson, Darbi R. Jones, Amy K. Taylor, Barbara J. Rutan, Timothy D. Leeds, Kate E. Langwig, Andrew R. Wargo, Gregory D. Wiens Jan 2021

Aquaculture Reuse Water, Genetic Line, And Vaccination Affect Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus Mykiss) Disease Susceptibility And Infection Dynamics, Jeremy L. Everson, Darbi R. Jones, Amy K. Taylor, Barbara J. Rutan, Timothy D. Leeds, Kate E. Langwig, Andrew R. Wargo, Gregory D. Wiens

VIMS Articles

Infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) and Flavobacterium psychrophilum are major pathogens of farmed rainbow trout. Improved control strategies are desired but the influence of on-farm environmental factors that lead to disease outbreaks remain poorly understood. Water reuse is an important environmental factor affecting disease. Prior studies have established a replicated outdoor-tank system capable of varying the exposure to reuse water by controlling water flow from commercial trout production raceways. The goal of this research was to evaluate the effect of constant or pulsed reuse water exposure on survival, pathogen prevalence, and pathogen load. Herein, we compared two commercial lines of …


Morphological And Mitochondrial Dna Analyses Of Oysters In The Northern Bay Of Bengal, Bangladesh, Mohammed S. N. Chowdhury, Kimberly S. Reece, Sourav S. Joy, Loren D. Coen, Aad C. Smaal Jan 2021

Morphological And Mitochondrial Dna Analyses Of Oysters In The Northern Bay Of Bengal, Bangladesh, Mohammed S. N. Chowdhury, Kimberly S. Reece, Sourav S. Joy, Loren D. Coen, Aad C. Smaal

VIMS Articles

The geographic boundaries of many important habitat-building shallow estuarine oyster (Family Ostreidae) species are poorly understood, especially in subtropical and tropical waters. These keystone species often have extensive historical and extant ranges, in part because of their ability to adapt to diverse environmental conditions and the transfer and introduction of a few species worldwide for aquaculture production. In addition, oysters exhibit morphological plasticity additionally confounding species identification and taxonomy. Molecular techniques have led to significant improvements in oyster systematics and taxonomy but have not been applied to oysters from many tropical regions, including the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean …


Effects Of Climate Change On Metabolite Accumulation In Freshwater And Marine Cyanobacteria, I-Shuo Huang, Xinping Hu, Hussain Abdulla, Paul V. Zimba Jan 2021

Effects Of Climate Change On Metabolite Accumulation In Freshwater And Marine Cyanobacteria, I-Shuo Huang, Xinping Hu, Hussain Abdulla, Paul V. Zimba

VIMS Articles

Global climate change and anthropogenic nutrient inputs are responsible for increased frequency of cyanobac- terial blooms that potentially contain 55 classes of bioactive metabolites. This study investigated the effects of CO2 availability and concomittant pH levels on two cyanobacteria that produce microcystins: a marine cf. Syne- chocystis sp. and a freshwater Microcystis aeruginosa. Cyanobacterial strains were semi-continuously cultured in mesotrophic growth media at pH 7.5, 7.8, 8.2, and 8.5 via a combination of CO2 addition and control of alkalinity. The cell concentration between treatments was not significantly different and nutrient availability was not lim- ited. Concentration of most known cyanobacterial …