Preservation of necrotizing hepatopancreatitis bacterium (NHPB) by freezing tissue collected from experimentally infected Litopenaeus vannamei.

Necrotizing hepatopancreatitis (NHP), a severe disease of penaeid shrimp, is caused by bacteria (NHPB) that have previously been demonstrated to reside in tubular epithelial hepatopancreatic (HP) cells of infected shrimp. There has yet to be a successful in vitro culture method to grow the intracellular organism; therefore, it must be propagated in vivo via transmission from NHPB-infected shrimp to healthy individuals. In our studies, NHPB propagation tanks containing infected shrimp were used to maintain a constant supply of organisms for experiments.