Publications by authors named "Yoji Nakamura"

Article Synopsis
  • The study examines how bariatric/metabolic surgery affects the incidence and severity of COVID-19 among patients in Japan, amidst ongoing debates about its protective benefits.
  • Data were collected from 83 institutions, revealing that while there were no severe cases or deaths among 119 patients studied, moderate COVID-19 cases were notably more prevalent in these bariatric patients than in the general population.
  • The findings suggest that bariatric/metabolic surgery does not reduce the risk of COVID-19 complications, as moderate cases were linked to specific risk factors such as dyslipidemia and prior infection.
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In rearing systems for the Japanese eel Anguilla japonica, although it is assumed that microorganisms influence larval survival and mortality, particularly during the early stages of growth, the effects of bacterial communities on larval survival have yet to be sufficiently determined. In this study, we compared the bacterial communities associated with larval survival at three stages of eel growth. To artificially alter bacterial communities and assess larval survival, eel larvae were treated with 11 types of antibiotic, and larval survival and bacterial characteristics were compared between the antibiotic-treated and antibiotic-free control groups.

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This is a case report of a man in his 60s who was diagnosed with a small bowel obstruction due to an internal hernia caused by a ureterocutaneous fistula. Internal hernia caused by the ureter following urinary diversion is rare, posing challenges in preoperative diagnosis and carrying the risk of intraoperative injury due to the resemblance of a ureterocutaneous fistula to an adhesive band. The presentation and surgical management are discussed in this case report.

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Pacific saury (Cololabis saira) is an important fish in several countries. Notably, the catch of this fish has markedly decreased recently, which might be due to environmental changes, including feeding habitat changes. However, no clear correlation has been observed.

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Tunas (genus Thunnus) are one of the most ecologically and commercially important fish worldwide. To establish a biological basis for reproduction in this globally essential species, we have recently studied crucial reproductive aspects of the Pacific bluefin tuna (T. orientalis; PBT), as a model of tuna species, based on our closed-cycle aquaculture technology.

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Article Synopsis
  • The order Parmales consists of tiny eukaryotic marine phytoplankton with silica plates and is closely related to diatoms, a highly successful group of phytoplankton.
  • Researchers compared the genomes of eight parmaleans and five diatoms to understand their physiological and evolutionary differences.
  • The study found that parmaleans are likely phago-mixotrophs, while diatoms evolved to primarily rely on photosynthesis, losing genes related to phagocytosis and developing specialized nutrient uptake mechanisms.
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Fish species have a variety of sex determination systems. Tunas (genus ) have an XY genetic sex determination system. However, the Y chromosome or responsible locus has not yet been identified in males.

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Many studies have investigated the ability to identify species from environmental DNA (eDNA). However, even when individual species are identified, the accurate estimation of their abundances by traditional eDNA analyses has been still difficult. We previously developed a novel analytical method called HaCeD-Seq (Haplotype Count from eDNA), which focuses on the mitochondrial D-loop sequence.

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We present the first draft whole-genome sequence for the Parmales (Bolidophyceae, Heterokonta), a picoplanktonic sister group of diatoms, using a f. strain that was isolated from the Oyashio region in the western North Pacific Ocean.

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A novel jumbo bacteriophage (myovirus) is described. The lytic phage of Tenacibaculum maritimum, which is the etiological agent of tenacibaculosis in a variety of farmed marine fish worldwide, was plaque-isolated from seawater around a fish aquaculture field in Japan. The phage had an isometric head 110-120 nm in diameter, from which several 50- to 100-nm-long flexible fiber-like appendages emanate, and a 150-nm-long rigid contractile tail.

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Natural diets of leptocephalus larvae have been enigmatic. In this study, we collected DNA samples from the gut contents and body surface of leptocephali belonging to the five Anguilliform families (Anguillidae, Chlopsidae, Congridae, Muraenidae, and Serrivomeridae) from the northwest Pacific and performed next-generation 18S rDNA sequencing. Wide variety of eukaryotes was detected in both samples, from which eight eukaryotic groups (jellyfish, conoid parasite, tunicate, copepod, krill, segmented worm, fungi, and dinoflagellate) were selected on the basis of abundance.

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Since 2002, blooms of Alexandrium catenella sensu Fraga et al. (2015) and paralytic shellfish toxicity events have occurred almost yearly in Osaka Bay, Japan. To better understand the triggers for reoccurring A.

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In bluefin tuna aquaculture, high mortalities of hatchery-reared juveniles occur in sea cages owing to wall collisions that are caused by high-speed swimming in panic due to changes in illuminance. Here, we report that targeted gene mutagenesis of the ryanodine receptor (RyR1b), which allows the sarcoplasmic reticulum to release Ca in fast skeletal muscle, using highly active Platinum TALENs caused slow swimming behaviour in response to external stimuli in Pacific bluefin tuna (PBT) larvae. This characteristic would be a useful trait to prevent wall collisions in aquaculture production.

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Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the process whereby an organism acquires exogenous genes (horizontally transferred genes or HT genes) that are not inherited from the parent, but are derived from another organism. In prokaryotes, HGT has been considered as one of the important driving forces of evolution. Previously, genome-wide analyses have been conducted for estimating the proportion of HT genes in prokaryotic genomes, but the number of species examined at the time was limited, and gene annotation was relatively poor.

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Seriola quinqueradiata (yellowtail) is the most widely farmed and economically important fish in aquaculture in Japan. In this study, we used the genome of haploid yellowtail fish larvae for de novo assembly of whole-genome sequences, and built a high-quality draft genome for the yellowtail. The total length of the assembled sequences was 627.

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Background: Gene duplication is considered important to increasing the genetic diversity in animals. In fish, visual pigment genes are often independently duplicated, and the evolutionary significance of such duplications has long been of interest. Eels have two rhodopsin genes (), one of which (freshwater type, ) functions in freshwater and the other (deep-sea type, ) in marine environments.

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Mass mortality that is acompanied by reddish browning of the soft tissues has been occurring in cultured pearl oyster, Pinctada fucata martensii. The disease is called Akoya oyster disease (AOD). Although spreading pattern of the disease and transmission experiments suggest that the disease is infectious, the causative agent has not yet been identified.

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Nocardiosis caused by Nocardia seriolae is one of the major threats in the aquaculture of Seriola species (yellowtail; S. quinqueradiata, amberjack; S. dumerili and kingfish; S.

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is a fish bacterial pathogen that causes hemolytic jaundice in farmed yellowtail in Japan. To understand more about the characteristics of this bacterium, we determined its complete genome sequence. Two hemolysin genes which may be important for its pathogenicity were identified in the genome.

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Erythrocytic inclusion body syndrome (EIBS) causes mass mortality in farmed salmonid fish, including the coho salmon, Onchorhynchus kisutchi, and chinook salmon, O. tshawytscha. The causative agent of the disease is a virus with an icosahedral virion structure, but this virus has not been characterized at the molecular level.

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Nonagglutinating Lactococcus garvieae has been isolated from diseased farmed yellowtail in Japan since 2012. In this study, the complete genome and plasmid sequence of nonagglutinating L. garvieae strain 122061 was determined, to our knowledge, for the first time.

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is the toxic marine dinoflagellate responsible for "red tide" events in temperate and sub-arctic waters worldwide. In the Gulf of Maine (GOM) and Bay of Fundy in the Northwest Atlantic, blooms of recur annually, and are associated with major health and ecosystem impacts. In this region, microsatellite markers have been used to investigate genetic structure and gene flow; however, the loci currently available for this species were isolated from populations from Japan and the North Sea, and only a subset are suitable for the analysis of populations in the Northwest Atlantic.

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Bluefin tuna are high-performance swimmers and top predators in the open ocean. Their swimming is grounded by unique features including an exceptional glycolytic potential in white muscle, which is supported by high enzymatic activities. Here we performed high-throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) in muscles of the Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) and Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) and conducted a comparative transcriptomic analysis of genes related to energy production.

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Orthologs are widely used for phylogenetic analysis of species; however, identifying genuine orthologs among distantly related species is challenging, because genes obtained through horizontal gene transfer (HGT) and out-paralogs derived from gene duplication before speciation are often present among the predicted orthologs. We developed a program, "Ortholog-Finder," to obtain ortholog data sets for performing phylogenetic analysis by using all open-reading frame data of species. The program includes five processes for minimizing the effects of HGT and out-paralogs in phylogeny construction: 1) HGT filtering: Genes derived from HGT could be detected and deleted from the initial sequence data set by examining their base compositions.

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