The Microsporidia, an often overlooked fungal lineage, exhibit increasing diversity and taxonomic understanding with the use of genomic techniques. They are obligate parasites infecting a diversity of hosts, including crustaceans. Crustacea are, in essence, ancient insects and their relationship with the Microsporidia is both diverse and convoluted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThree novel crayfish-infecting nudiviruses from crayfish in North America represent the first genomic confirmation of nudiviruses in crayfish: Faxonius propinquus nudivirus (FpNV), Faxonius rusticus nudivirus (FrNV), and Faxonius virilis nudivirus (FvNV). Histopathology and electron microscopy revealed nuclear infections, including nuclear hypertrophy in hepatopancreatic epithelial cells and the presence of membrane-bound bacilliform virions. Metagenomic sequencing resulted in complete circular genome assembly, and phylogenetic analyses (based on nudivirus core genes) placed these viruses within the unofficial Epsilonnudivirus genus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Although addition of adjuvant chemotherapy is the current standard, the prognosis of pancreatic cancers still remains poor. The NEPAFOX trial evaluated perioperative treatment with FOLFIRINOX in resectable pancreatic cancer.
Patients And Methods: This multicenter phase II trial randomized patients with resectable or borderline resectable pancreatic cancer without metastases into arm (A,) upfront surgery plus adjuvant gemcitabine, or arm (B,) perioperative FOLFIRINOX.
J Invertebr Pathol
November 2023
The bay scallop Argopecten irradians supported a commercial fishery in Florida but their population declined and the fishery closed in 1994. A recreational fishery remains open along the west coast of Florida despite continued threats from overfishing and a changing environment. Disease is among those threats, as it is for bivalve fisheries globally.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMenippe mercenaria, the Florida stone crab, supports an unconventional fishery across the southern USA and Caribbean that involves claw-removal and the return of de-clawed animals to the sea. We provide pathological, ultrastructural, and genomic detail for a novel hepatopancreatic, nucleus-specific virus - Menippe mercenaria nudivirus (MmNV) - isolated from M. mercenaria, captured during fisheries-independent monitoring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCrayfishes are among the most widely introduced freshwater taxa and can have extensive ecological impacts. Knowledge of the parasites crayfish harbor is limited, yet co-invasion of parasites is a significant risk associated with invasions. In this study, we describe a novel microsporidium, Cambaraspora faxoni n.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCrayfish have strong ecological impacts in freshwater systems, yet our knowledge of their parasites is limited. This study describes the first systemic microsporidium (infects multiple tissue types) Alternosema astaquatica n. sp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEchinoderm mass mortality events shape marine ecosystems by altering the dynamics among major benthic groups. The sea urchin , virtually extirpated in the Caribbean in the early 1980s by an unknown cause, recently experienced another mass mortality beginning in January 2022. We investigated the cause of this mass mortality event through combined molecular biological and veterinary pathologic approaches comparing grossly normal and abnormal animals collected from 23 sites, representing locations that were either affected or unaffected at the time of sampling.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe movement of viruses in aquatic systems is rarely studied over large geographic scales. Oceanic currents, host migration, latitude-based variation in climate, and resulting changes in host life history are all potential drivers of virus connectivity, adaptation, and genetic structure. To expand our understanding of the genetic diversity of Callinectes sapidus reovirus 1 (CsRV1) across a broad spatial and host life history range of its blue crab host (), we obtained 22 complete and 96 partial genomic sequences for CsRV1 strains from the US Atlantic coast, Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and the Atlantic coast of South America.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe microsporidian diversity catalogued so far has resulted in the development of several taxonomic groups, one of which is the Enterocytozoonida - a group of generalist 'ultimate opportunists', which infect many fished and aquacultured animals, as well as a broad suite of host taxa, including humans. In this study, we provide phylogenetic, ultrastructural, developmental, and pathological evidence for the creation of a new genus and species to hold a microsporidian parasite of the Jonah crab, Cancer borealis. Cancer borealis represents a species of commercial interest and has become the target of a recently developed fishery on the USA and Canadian Atlantic coast.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCallinectes sapidus, or the 'blue crab', supports an extensive east-coast USA fishery and was one of the first crustacean species in which viruses were observed. Pioneering research by Dr Phyllis Johnson led to these initial discoveries, one of which included the discovery of a virus termed "Baculovirus-A". This virus was considered a potential member of the Baculoviridae, Nimaviridae, or Nudiviridae, in which all viral members are rod-shaped dsDNA viruses found in the nucleus of their host cell.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOvipleistophora (Microsporidia) is a globally distributed genus of obligate parasites that infect fish, Crustacea, and trematodes. We report on two additional crayfish hosts, Procambarus pictus (Simms Creek, Florida) and Procambarus fallax (Santa Fe River, Florida), that exhibited signs of high-intensity microsporidian infection in the musculature. Sequence data (SSU) for the isolates were 99.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCrayfish are common hosts of microsporidian parasites, prominently from the genus . is a polyphyletic genus, with multiple genetically distinct lineages found from freshwater and marine environments. Researchers have been calling for a revision of this group for over a decade.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neurol Surg A Cent Eur Neurosurg
July 2022
Background: Scalp defects represent a therapeutic challenge. The aim of this study is to present our experience with local and regional flaps in the treatment of trauma-induced scalp defects. Furthermore, a comparison with other surgical techniques was performed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Overall survival remains poor in older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with less than 10% being alive after 5 years. In recent studies, a significant improvement in event-free, relapse-free and overall survival was shown by adding gemtuzumab ozogamicin (GO), a humanized antibody-drug conjugate directed against CD33, to intensive induction therapy once or in a sequential dosing schedule. Glasdegib, the small-molecule inhibitor of smoothened (SMO), also showed improved overall survival in patients not eligible for intensive chemotherapy when combined with low-dose cytarabine compared to low-dose cytarabine alone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Secondary lymphedema after surgical interventions is a progressive, chronic disease that is still not completely curable. Over the past years, a multitude of surgical therapy options have been described.
Aim: To summarize the single-center complications in lymph vessel (LVTx) and free vascularized lymph node transfer (VLNT).
Crustaceans permeate every habitat on Earth but are especially impactful in the marine environment. They can be small and extremely abundant like the ubiquitous marine copepods found throughout the world's oceans, or large and highly prized by fishermen like spiny lobsters found in tropical and temperate seas, globally. The latter are among the decapod crustaceans, a group which includes crabs, shrimps, and lobsters - those targeted most commonly by fishery and aquaculture industries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA positive, single-stranded RNA virus is identified from the transcriptome of Probopyrinella latreuticola Gissler, 1882; a bopyrid isopod parasite of the Sargassum shrimp, Latreutes fucorum Fabricius, 1789. The viral sequence is 13,098 bp in length (including polyA), encoding four open reading frames (ORF). ORF-1 encodes a polyprotein, with three computationally discernible functional domains: viral methyltransferase; viral helicase; and RNA-directed RNA polymerase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFew data exist on health-related quality of life (QoL) in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer (mPC) receiving first-line chemotherapy (Awad L ZE, Mesbah M Boston, MA. Applying survival data methodology to analyze quality of life data, in Mesbah M, Cole BF, Ting Lee M-L (eds): Statistical Methods for Quality of Life Studies: Design, Measurements and Analysis. Kluwer Academic Publishers 2002).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Nudiviridae are a family of large double-stranded DNA viruses that infects the cells of the gut in invertebrates, including insects and crustaceans. The phylogenetic range of the family has recently been enhanced via the description of viruses infecting penaeid shrimp, crangonid shrimp, homarid lobsters and portunid crabs. Here we extend this by presenting the genome of another nudivirus infecting the amphipod Dikerogammarus haemobaphes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Sci Technol
September 2020
Although precipitation is considered to be the most important diffuse source of trifluoroacetate (TFA) to the nonmarine environment, information regarding the wet deposition of TFA as well as general data on the spatial and temporal variations in TFA concentration in precipitation is scarce. This is the first study to provide a comprehensive overview of the occurrence of TFA in precipitation by a systematic and nation-wide field monitoring campaign. In total, 1187 precipitation samples, which were collected over the course of 12 consecutive months at eight locations across Germany, were analyzed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAquaculture is predicted to supply the majority of aquatic dietary protein by 2050. For aquaculture to deliver significantly enhanced volumes of food in a sustainable manner, appropriate account needs to be taken of its impacts on environmental integrity, farmed organism health and welfare, and human health. Here, we explore increased aquaculture production through the One Health lens and define a set of success metrics - underpinned by evidence, policy and legislation - that must be embedded into aquaculture sustainability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding population genetic structure can help us to infer dispersal patterns, predict population resilience and design effective management strategies. For sessile species with limited dispersal, this is especially pertinent because genetic diversity and connectivity are key aspects of their resilience to environmental stressors. Here, we describe the population structure of Ircinia campana, a common Caribbean sponge subject to mass mortalities and disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Treatment of patients with solid tumors and KRAS mutations remains disappointing. One option is the combined inhibition of pathways involved in RAF-MEK-ERK and PI3K-AKT-mTOR.
Methods: Patients with relapsed solid tumors were treated with escalating doses of everolimus (E) 2.