Abstract:
In order to reveal the main causative agents and the related virulence factors of "acute death syndrome" in
Babylonia areolata, the pathogens were isolated, purified, artificially infected.The results showed that the pathogen was
Vibrio tubiashii.In this study, four strains of
V.tubiashii, which had different degrees of virulence, were tested for 17 virulent-related genes.The healthy and diseased
B.areolatasample were also detected these 17 genes.It showed that strain BBXP1 and strain FBC1carried 12 kinds of virulence genes while the attenuated strain FB13 took 7 kinds of virulence genes.Therefore, the pathogenicity of vibrios may be related to the number of virulence genes.Meanwhile, the results indicated that
tlh (non-thermostatic hemolytic toxin),
asp (extracellular alkaline serine protease),
vtmp (metalloproteinase),
chi36 (exochitinase),
vtpA (zinc metalloproteinase)and
vthA (hemolysin) were positive in all the four strains of
V.tubiashii but could only be detected in the tissue samples of
B.areolata with "acute death".Furthermore, the mNRA expression difference of 6 kinds of virulence genes in 4 different kinds of
V.tubiashii were examined by real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR.The results displayed that the relative expression levels of
asp and
vtpA were positively correlated with the pathogenicity of vibrio, and the expression of
asp and
vtpA in virulent strains were significantly higher than that of the attenuated strain.In detail, the mRNA relative expression levels of
vtpA and
asp increased with the enhancement of pathogenicity of
V.tubiashii, and the
LD50 of the strain was significantly correlated with the relative expression (
r2=0.933, 0.948;
P < 0.05).On the contrary, the mRNA expression of
vthA was negatively correlated with the pathogenicity of vibrio(
r2=0.2401;
P < 0.05) and the relative expression of several other virulence genes was not significantly correlated with the virulence.It was found that the relative expression of the same virulence factor in different virulence strains was different.The metalloproteinase and serine protease from
V.tubiashii played a leading role in the process of infecting in
Babylonia areolata.