Viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV) is a rhabdovirus found in fish from oceans of the northern hemisphere and freshwaters of Europe. It has caused extensive losses of cultured and wild fish and has become established in the North American Great Lakes. Large die-offs of wild fish in the Great Lakes due to VHSV have alarmed the public and provoked government attention on the introduction an...

All reported natural isolates of the marine fish pathogen Vibrio salmonicida contain plasmids, and in another marine fish pathogen, Vibrio anguillarum, it has been shown that a plasmid is important for expression of virulence by the organism. To study the function of the plasmids in V. salmonicida, we developed a gene transfer system based on the plasmid RSF1010 replicon. The gene transfer syst...

Three strains of gliding bacteria resembling a known fish pathogen, Flexibacter columnaris, were recently isolated from diseased freshwater fishes in France. Morphological, physiological, and biochemical characteristics were very similar to those of 6 F. columnaris strains previously identified in other countries and used here for reference. This is the first unequivocal identification of this ...

Specific identification and differentiation of the 2 subspecies of the fish pathogen Francisella noatunensis, namely, F. noatunensis subsp. noatunensis and F. noatunensis subsp. orientalis, remains a major diagnostic challenge. Following whole-genome sequencing and analysis of representatives of all major subclades of the genus Francisella, specific genomic regions were identified for each of t...

Mass mortality of stinging catfish, Heteropneustes fossilis, was observed in a fish farm of Kulgaria, Burdwan in West Bengal, India. The cumulative mortality rates reached up to 5% of the total fish in the farm per day. The clinical signs of the affected fish showed ulcers on the skin which gradually grew in size and progressed to form ulcerous dermatitis. Clinical signs of catfish experimental...

L. monocytogenes is a foodborne psychrotrophic bacterial pathogen of special importance for minimally processed foods. In this work, it was enumerated in samples of surubim fish by MPN technique. The population of L. monocytogenes was estimated as < 0.012 MPN/cm(2) in fresh and < 0.03 MPN/g in minimally processed fish.

Mycobacterium stephanolepidis is a rapid-growing nonpigmented species isolated from marine teleost fish (Stephanolepis cirrhifer) and is closely related to Mycobacterium chelonae Here, we report the complete sequence of its genome, comprising a 4.9-Mb chromosome. The sequence represents essential data for future phylogenetic and comparative genome studies of this fish pathogen.