|
Abstract
|
Bacterial coldwater disease (BCWD) is a worldwide problem in temperate freshwater aquaculture and is caused by the Gram-negative bacterium Flavobacterium psychrophilum. As the name suggests, low water temperatures (8oC) are characteristic of all of the varied clinical presentations and disease doesn’t occur at warmer temperatures (18oC). Therefore, there would be proteins of F. psychrophilum that are induced or upregulated during growth at 8oC compared with 18oC. Two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis was used to examine spot-pattern differences of two strains of F. psychrophilum (FpG3 and 25). The spots of greatest interest were those that were only present at 8oC or those that were more prominent at 8oC vs. 18oC and one and six spots met these criteria for F. psychrophilum strains FpG3 and 25, respectively. Internal amino acid sequence was obtained for two spots from FpG25 that were present only at 8oC and 4 spots from FpG25 that were upregulated at 8oC compared with 18oC. Based on available sequences in Genbank these proteins were most similar to a Flavo-specific protein antigen FspA precursor, a 50S ribosomal protein L7/L12 of F. psychrophilum and four hypothetical proteins of F. psychrophilum; FP2384, FP2412, FP2104 and FP2052
|