A new age in AquaMedicine: unconventional approach in studying aquatic diseases

Abstract

BackgroundMarine and aquaculture industries are important sectors of the food production and global trade. Unfortunately, the fish food industry is challenged with a plethora of infectious pathogens. The freshwater and marine fish communities are rapidly incorporating novel and most up to date techniques for detection, characterization and treatment strategies. Rapid detection of infectious diseases is important in preventing large disease outbreaks.Main textOne hundred forty-six articles including reviews papers were analyzed and their conclusions evaluated in the present paper. This allowed us to describe the most recent development research regarding the control of diseases in the aquatic environment as well as promising avenues that may result in beneficial developments. For the characterization of diseases, traditional sequencing and histological based methods have been augmented with transcriptional and proteomic studies. Recent studies have demonstrated that transcriptional based approaches using qPCR are often synergistic to expression based studies that rely on proteomic-based techniques to better understand pathogen-host interactions. Preventative therapies that rely on prophylactics such as vaccination with protein antigens or attenuated viruses are not always feasible and therefore, the development of therapies based on small nucleotide based medicine is on the horizon. Of those, RNAi or CRISPR/Cas- based therapies show great promise in combating various types of diseases caused by viral and parasitic agents that effect aquatic and fish medicine.ConclusionsIn our modern times, when the marine industry has become so vital for feed and economic stability, even the most extreme alternative treatment strategies such as the use of small molecules or even the use of disease to control invasive species populations should be considered.

Effects of insect diets on the gastrointestinal tract health and growth performance of Siberian sturgeon (Acipenser baerii Brandt, 1869)

“…Some of the most important factors of animal health include growth performance parameters and gastrointestinal tract (GIT) conditions. There are many data on the impact of nutrition on the gastrointestinal microbiota and gut health [6–8, 11, 16, 20, 26, 30, 40, 72]. Intestinal diseases can develop as an effect of unbalanced diets resulting in disturbances in the homeostasis of the GIT microbiome.…”

Fish Pathology Research and Diagnosis in Aquaculture of Farmed Fish; a Proteomics Perspective

“…To properly diagnose pathology in aquaculture, we must consider disease as a problem with multiple levels of increasing biological complexity, ranging from environmental to the cell, genome and proteome level ( Figure 3 ) [ 26 , 27 ].…”

“…New areas like Proteomics can be an important complement to more classical approaches like pathogen identification, disease symptomatology and histopathological analysis to achieve a good disease diagnosis in aquaculture [ 22 , 23 , 27 , 29 , 30 ]. In Proteomics, regardless the complexity of the analysed protein mixtures that can range from hundreds, to several thousands of proteins, the major goal is the accurate identification of the highest number of proteins as possible in those mixtures [ 32 ].…”

“…The amount of data from different origins and an increase in the reported frequency and severity of marine diseases demands that new diagnostic tools should be implemented for a more rapid and effective diagnosis [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Thus, several scientific advances in aquatic health continue to close the gap to veterinary medicine, and new optical, analytical chemistry, molecular biology [ 27 ], and Omics techniques are becoming a reality that offers a vast array of benefits to the aquaculture industry [ 12 , 28 ]. Proteomics techniques are one of those new tools, and one of the most interesting approaches for health management, epidemiology, and fish disease research [ 3 , 22 , 23 , 29 , 30 ].…”

Elucidation of putative binding partners for the protein encoded by ORF149 of cyprinid herpesvirus 3 in goldfish (Carassius auratus)

“…The aquamedicine field is rapidly adapting unconventional approaches for the detection, characterization and treatment of emergent threats to marine and aquaculture industries (Reviewed by Gotesman, Menanteau‐Ledouble, Saleh, Bergmann, & El‐Matbouli, 2018). Interactions with host cells are one of the most critical aspects of viral infections; therefore, such studies can greatly improve our understanding of the disease.…”