Project description:Maintaining marine salinities in inland aquaculture systems can be cost-prohibitive. As such, there has been an emphasis on the identification of marine species that can be reared at low salinities. The Florida pompano (Trachinotus carolinus) is a popular sportfish that can survive in salinities as low as 5 ppt and has been identified as a potential target species for commercial production. Vibrio spp., bacterial pathogens ubiquitous in aquaculture systems, are capable of quickly decimating aquaculture populations. However, there is limited data available on the effects of salinity influences on Vibrio susceptibility in juvenile Florida pompano. This study investigated the influence of lowered salinity on the immune response of juvenile Florida pompano exposed to Vibrio across a 14-day period through assessment of transcriptomic changes, fatty acid biosynthesis, and identification of internal and external signs of vibriosis. During the experimental period, there were no differences in osmoregulatory or immune related gene expression, no obvious signs of vibriosis, and no changes in fatty acid biosynthesis in fish exposed to 8, 12, 20, or 28 ppt seawater. These results suggest juvenile Florida pompano are resilient to salinity changes and exhibit baseline molecular machinery capable of responding to pathogenic challenges across a range of salinities, making them strong candidates for rearing in inland aquaculture.
Project description:Although many members of the genus Vibrio are known to inhabit the marine photic zone, an understanding of the influence of light on the molecular physiology of Vibrio spp. has largely been neglected. To begin to characterize the photophysiology of one such Vibrio sp. (Vibrio campbellii ATCC strain BAA-1116) we used microarray-based expression profiling to compare the transcriptomes of illuminated versus dark cell cultures. Specficially, we compared the transcriptomes of wild type V. campbellii (STR) cells that were cultured in M9 minimal salts medium plus glucose under two conditions: (i) after 24 hours of continuous dark and (ii) after a 12 hour dark:12 hour light cycle (white light illumination at 54 µmol photons s-1 m-2). The results revealed a large photostimulon (differential expression of ~20% of the V. campbellii genome; adjusted p value < 0.0001) that surprisingly included ~75% of the type III secretion system (T3SS) genes which were found to be 1.6 – 5.4X more abundant in illuminated cultures. These findings, which were confirmed by quantitative reverse transcription PCR and quantitative membrane proteomics, strongly suggest that the photostimulon of strain BAA-1116 includes the T3SS.