Mass Mortalities of Cultured Striped Beakperch, Oplegnathus fasciatus by Iridoviral Infection

Abstract

From August to October 1998, over 60% mortality of cultured striped beakperch Oplegnathus fasciatus was occurred in net cages along the southern coast of Korea. Moribund fish showed some clinical signs of lethargic behavior, dark coloration or decoloration, severe gill anemia and enlargement of spleen. Also enlarged basophilic cells showing Feulgen -positive reaction were observed in the tissue section of spleen, kidney, liver and heart of the diseased fish. GF cells inoculated with spleen homogenate of diseased fish produced cytopathic effect of enlarged and rounded cells, therefore the causative virus was isolated from diseased fish. Striped beakperch fingerlings intraperitoneally inoculated with the causative virus (/0.1 ml) revealed symptoms similar to those of naturally infected fish and died from 7 to 14 days post injection. Transmission electron microscopy revealed that the causative virus was enveloped icosahedral particle with 120~130 nm in diameter. PCR products of the expected size (500 bp) were amplified with a primer set based on the ATPase gene of RSIV(red sea bream iridovirus) using template DNAs which were extracted from the spleen of diseased fish and GF cells inoculated with the causative virus. According to the analysis of nucleotide sequence of these PCR products, the sequence from ATPase cDNA gene of the causative virus showed 95% homology with that of RSIV. These results indicate that the mass mortality in the cultured striped beakperch was caused by the infection of iridovirus similar to RSIV.