Growth kinetics, protease activity and histophagous capability of Uronema sp. infesting cultured silver pomfret Pampus argenteus in Kuwait

Scuticociliatosis and its recent prophylactic measures in aquaculture with special reference to South Korea

“…The tendency to anaemia is consistent with the haematophagous activity of scuticociliates [10,14,19]. Infected fish showed low and erratic levels of parasitaemia; although the ciliates were frequently observed intravascularly and perivascularly, and in well-vascularized organs distant from the inoculation point (such as brain and gills) were affected rarely but had the pathogens as the infection progressed [54]. If the blood stream was a major dissemination route abundance of ciliates in peripheral blood and in organs with portal vascular system or filtration functions of organs, such as liver, kidney, gills, and spleen, would also be expected.…”

“…Proteases, including cathepsine B and metalloproteases have been demonstrated in parasitic scuticociliates and their importance during ciliate invasion and pathogenesis has been suggested [53]. Working on the histophagus digestibility of lateral musculature and protease activity due to Uronema sp., Al-Marzouk and Azad [54] showed that the scuticociliate exhibited high histophagy associated with a high production of the protease and the parasite also had a higher protease-mediated muscle digestibility when repassed in the host when compared to the parasite successively sub-cultured in vitro. Liver, kidney, and spleen parenchyma as well as the connective tissue among organs had small agglomerations of spores or macrophages filled with spores released from xenomas [10].…”

Use of Cell Cultures to Study the Interactions of Ciliates with Fish

“…from an infected fish, the silver pomfret (Pampus argenteus), was cultured on brain heart infusion broth in which a Vibrio sp. was growing [121]. Also natural bacterial assemblages from sediment sustained U. marinus [122].…”

Analysis of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and gene expression changes under different growth conditions for the ciliate Anophryoides haemophila, the causative agent of bumper car disease in the American lobster (Homarus americanus)

“…There is growing evidence that histophagous scuticociliates use the secretion of proteins, mainly cysteine proteases, as a common mechanism during host invasion (Al-Marzouk and Azad, 2007;Lee et al, 2003;Parama et al, 2004;Parama et al, 2007a,b;Small et al, 2005). We therefore used SignalP 3.0 to search for putative signal peptides for prediction of classically secreted eukaryotic proteins within the 843 A. haemophila ESTs (Bendtsen et al, 2004).…”