Effect of Bacteriophages on Vibrio alginolyticus Infection in the Sea Cucumber, Apostichopus japonicus (Selenka). Issue 2 (April 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhang, Jiancheng; Cao, Zhenhui; Li, Zhen; Wang, Lili; Li, Huaqiang; Wu, Feifei; Jin, Liji; Li, Xiaoyu; Li, Shuying; Xu, Yongping
• Is Part Of: Journal of the World Aquaculture Society. Volume 46:Issue 2(2015)
• Page Start: 149
• Page End: 158
• Publication Date: 2015-04
• Subjects: Aquaculture -- Periodicals; 639.8
• DOI: 10.1111/jwas.12177
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0893-8849

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" id="jwas12177-abs-0001"> <title>Abstract</title> <p id="jwas12177-para-0001"> <italic>Vibrio alginolyticus</italic> is an important pathogen that causes a variety of diseases in marine animals including the sea cucumber, <italic>Apostichopus japonicus.</italic> Herein, we describe a two‐phage mixture which may have potential for use as an antibacterial agent to prevent <italic>V. alginolyticus</italic> infection in the sea cucumber. A Z1210 bacterial isolate was cultured from diseased sea cucumber suffering from skin ulcerations and viscera ejection. The isolate was identified as <italic>V. alginolyticus</italic> by morphology and sequence similarity analysis. Subsequently, two bacteriophages infecting isolate Z1210 were isolated from the drainpipe of an aquatic market. Morphologically, these two phages were classified as members of <italic>Podoviridae</italic> (PVA1) and <italic>Myoviridae</italic> (PVA2) and each phage showed high virulence in an <italic>in vitro</italic> experiment. Additionally, an experiment conducted in a marine environment showed that a mixture of the two phages increased the survival of sea cucumbers (10 ± 2 g) to 73, 50, and 47% when it was used with a multiplicity of infection of 10, 1, or 0.1, respectively. This result differed markedly from the control without phage (3% survival) while there was no significant difference between the 80 and 47% survival observed for two antibiotic treatments (5 mg/L doxycycline and 10 mg/L kanamycin, respectively).</p> </abstract>