SuMMARyFrancisella philomiragia was isolated from Atlantic salmon cage-farmed in the Llanquihue lake with outbreaks of a granulomatous disease, with high rates of morbidity and an accumulated mortalities between 5% to 20%. The isolates had 100% similarity with F. philomiragia ssp noatunensis or F. piscicida isolated in Atlantic cod, 99% similarity with Francisella sp. detected in tilapia from Asia and Central America and 99% of similarity with the reference strain F. philomiragia through 16s rDNA phylogenetic analysis.Palabras clave: Francisella philomiragia, salmón del Atlántico, análisis filogenético.

Piscirickettsiosis is a threatening infectious disease for the salmon industry, due to it being responsible for significant economic losses. The control of outbreaks also poses considerable environmental challenges. Despite Piscirickettsia salmonis having been discovered as the aetiological agent of the disease more than 25 years ago, its pathogenicity remains poorly understood. Among virulence factors identified so far, type four secretion systems (T4SS) seem to play a key role during the infection caused by the bacterium. We report here the genetic manipulation of P. salmonis by means of the transference of plasmid DNA in mating assays. An insertion cassette was engineered for targeting the icmB gene, which encodes a putative T4SS‐ATPase and is carried by one of the chromosomal T4SS clusters found within the genome of P. salmonis PM15972A1, a virulent representative of the EM‐90‐like strain. The molecular characterization of the resulting mutant strain demonstrated that the insertion interrupted the target gene. Further in vitro testing of the icmB mutant showed a dramatic drop in infectivity as tested in CHSE‐214 cells, which is in agreement with its attenuated behaviour observed in vivo. Altogether, our results demonstrate that, similar to other facultative intracellular pathogens, P. salmonis’ virulence relies on an intact T4SS.