Affiliations 

  • 1 Institute of Marine Biotechnology, University Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia
  • 2 School of Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences, University Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia
  • 3 Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
  • 4 Laboratory of Aquaculture & Artemia Reference Center, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
  • 5 Agrobest Malaysia Sdn. Bhd, Pekan, Pahang, Malaysia
J Fish Dis, 2016 May;39(5):577-84.
PMID: 26132358 DOI: 10.1111/jfd.12390

Abstract

Feeding aquatic animals with bacterial encapsulated heat-shock proteins (Hsps) is potentially a new method to combat vibriosis, an important disease affecting aquatic animals used in aquaculture. Food pellets comprised of shrimp and containing Escherichia coli overexpressing either DnaK-DnaJ-GrpE, the prokaryotic equivalents of Hsp70-Hsp40-Hsp20, or only DnaK were fed to juveniles of the white leg shrimp Penaeus vannamei, and protection against pathogenic Vibrio harveyi was determined. Maintaining pellets at different temperatures for varying lengths of time reduced the number of live adhering E. coli, as did contact with sea water, demonstrating that storage and immersion adversely affected bacterial survival and attachment to pellets. Feeding P. vannamei with E. coli did not compromise their survival, indicating that the bacteria were not pathogenic to shrimp. Feeding P. vannamei with pellets containing bacteria overproducing DnaK (approximately 60 cells g(-1) pellets) boosted P. vannamei survival twofold against V. harveyi, suggesting that DnaK plays a role in Vibrio tolerance. Pellets containing DnaK were effective in providing protection to P. vannamei for up to 2 weeks before loss of viability and that DnaK encapsulated by these bacteria enhanced shrimp resistance against Vibrio infection.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.