Immunology, Immunotoxicology and Pathology of Aquatic Animals

A special issue of Vaccines (ISSN 2076-393X). This special issue belongs to the section "Veterinary Vaccines".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2023) | Viewed by 4341

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Marine Science and Fisheries, Jiangsu Ocean University, Lianyungang 222005, China
Interests: fish molecular and cellular immunology; fish innate immunity; host-pathogen interaction; immunostimulant development; aquatic vaccines
School of Life Science, Neijiang Normal University, Neijiang 641000, China
Interests: fish vaccine; fish pathology; fish immune response; characterization and therapy of aquatic diseases; aquaculture technology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Aquaculture is a vital industry for improving world food security because it provides high-quality proteins; however, the frequent outbreak of aquatic diseases has caused huge economic losses to the aquaculture industry. The systematic study of host immunity, immune response, immunotoxicology, and pathology of aquatic animals can lay the foundation for the prevention and therapy of aquatic diseases. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the immunology of aquatic animals, bringing novel insights into the immunity and immune responses upon infection. Meanwhile, the outbreak of many aquatic diseases is related to environmental quality, and various environmental pollutants probably exist immunotoxic potential. Thereby, it is important to better understand the host-pathogen–environment interactions and immunotoxicological effect using modern biotechnology, combined with the identification of symptoms and pathological characteristics in the process of aquatic diseases.

This Special Issue aims to seek high-quality contributions that explore the immunity, immune responses, and mechanisms of aquatic animals, like the host-pathogen–environment interactions. We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, which mainly focuses on the novel findings of immunology, immunotoxicology, and the pathology of aquatic animals.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  1. New insights into the innate and adaptive immunity of aquatic animals: the biological functions of immune-related genes, cells, and tissues;
  2. Novel findings of the immune responses, inflammation, and mechanisms against pathogenic infection in aquatic animals;
  3. Exploration and characterization of the host-pathogen–environment interactions in aquatic animals using multi-omics technologies;
  4. The immunotoxicological effects, immune responses, and potential biomarkers of aquatic animals that exposure to toxic substances;
  5. Symptoms and pathological characteristics of aquatic animals induced by pathogenic infection or toxic substances.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Zhujin Ding
Dr. Yang He
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • aquatic animals
  • immune system
  • immune response
  • host-pathogen–environment interactions
  • immunotoxicological effects
  • pathological characteristics

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 2385 KiB  
Article
The Screening of the Protective Antigens of Aeromonas hydrophila Using the Reverse Vaccinology Approach: Potential Candidates for Subunit Vaccine Development
by Ting Zhang, Minying Zhang, Zehua Xu, Yang He, Xiaoheng Zhao, Hanliang Cheng, Xiangning Chen, Jianhe Xu and Zhujin Ding
Vaccines 2023, 11(7), 1266; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11071266 - 21 Jul 2023
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2113
Abstract
The threat of bacterial septicemia caused by Aeromonas hydrophila infection to aquaculture growth can be prevented through vaccination, but differences among A. hydrophila strains may affect the effectiveness of non-conserved subunit vaccines or non-inactivated A. hydrophila vaccines, making the identification and development of [...] Read more.
The threat of bacterial septicemia caused by Aeromonas hydrophila infection to aquaculture growth can be prevented through vaccination, but differences among A. hydrophila strains may affect the effectiveness of non-conserved subunit vaccines or non-inactivated A. hydrophila vaccines, making the identification and development of conserved antigens crucial. In this study, a bioinformatics analysis of 4268 protein sequences encoded by the A. hydrophila J-1 strain whole genome was performed based on reverse vaccinology. The specific analysis included signal peptide prediction, transmembrane helical structure prediction, subcellular localization prediction, and antigenicity and adhesion evaluation, as well as interspecific and intraspecific homology comparison, thereby screening the 39 conserved proteins as candidate antigens for A. hydrophila vaccine. The 9 isolated A. hydrophila strains from diseased fish were categorized into 6 different molecular subtypes via enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC)-PCR technology, and the coding regions of 39 identified candidate proteins were amplified via PCR and sequenced to verify their conservation in different subtypes of A. hydrophila and other Aeromonas species. In this way, conserved proteins were screened out according to the comparison results. Briefly, 16 proteins were highly conserved in different A. hydrophila subtypes, of which 2 proteins were highly conserved in Aeromonas species, which could be selected as candidate antigens for vaccines development, including type IV pilus secretin PilQ (AJE35401.1) and TolC family outer membrane protein (AJE35877.1). The present study screened the conserved antigens of A. hydrophila by using reverse vaccinology, which provided basic foundations for developing broad-spectrum protective vaccines of A. hydrophila. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Immunology, Immunotoxicology and Pathology of Aquatic Animals)
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13 pages, 3617 KiB  
Article
Exploring the Immunoprotective Potential of a Nanocarrier Immersion Vaccine Encoding Sip against Streptococcus Infection in Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus)
by Ye Cao, Jia Liu, Gaoyang Liu, Hui Du, Tianqiang Liu, Gaoxue Wang, Qing Wang, Ya Zhou and Erlong Wang
Vaccines 2023, 11(7), 1262; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11071262 - 20 Jul 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1728
Abstract
Tilapia, as one of the fish widely cultured around the world, is suffering severe impact from the streptococcus disease with the deterioration of the breeding environment and the increasing of breeding density, which brings serious economic loss to tilapia farming. In this study, [...] Read more.
Tilapia, as one of the fish widely cultured around the world, is suffering severe impact from the streptococcus disease with the deterioration of the breeding environment and the increasing of breeding density, which brings serious economic loss to tilapia farming. In this study, the surface immunogenic protein (Sip) of Streptococcus agalactiae (S. agalactiae) was selected as the potential candidate antigen and connected with bacterial nano cellulose (BNC) to construct the nanocarrier subunit vaccine (BNC-rSip), and the immersion immune effects against S. agalactiae and Streptococcus iniae (S. iniae) in Nile tilapia were evaluated on the basis of the serum antibody level, non-specific enzyme activity, the immune-related gene expression and relative percent survival (RPS). The results indicated that Sip possessed the expected immunogenicity according to the immunoinformatic analysis. Compared with the rSip group, BNC-rSip significantly induced serum antibody production and improved the innate immunity level of tilapia. After challenge, the RPS of BNC-rSip groups were 78.95% (S. agalactiae) and 67.86% (S. iniae), which were both higher than those of rSip groups,31.58% (S. agalactiae) and 35.71% (S. iniae), respectively. Our study indicated that BNC-rSip can induce protective immunity for tilapia through immersion immunization and may be an ideal candidate vaccine for controlling tilapia streptococcal disease. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Immunology, Immunotoxicology and Pathology of Aquatic Animals)
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