“…Our non-invasive experimental infection technique aimed at reproducing horizontal transfer of vibriosis to healthy oysters. For mollusk bivalves and C. gigas in particular, most studies reported in the literature have used a form of immune stimulation based on a treatment by inactivated microorganisms, mainly Micrococcus luteus, V. splendidus, V. anguillarum, V. alginolyticus, V. tubiashii, V. metschnikovii [16,23,48,49], or microbial components such as lipopolysaccharides poly I:C, poly G:C and dsDNA [48,50,51], with the main purpose of confirming the involvement of newly identified putative immune genes in defense reactions and studying them at a transcriptional level. These studies and some others used live bacteria, which were mostly harmless strains of Micrococcus luteus, V. alginolyticus, V. tasmaniensis, V. anguillarum, V. splendidus, V. tubiashii and V. metschnikovii [20,23,24,33,52,53].…”