Agnew-Camiener M Victoria, Eisenlord Morgan E, Friedman Carolyn S, Schreier Harold J, Burge Colleen A
Department of Marine Biotechnology, Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
J Eukaryot Microbiol. 2025 Jan-Feb;72(1):e13073. doi: 10.1111/jeu.13073.
The class Labyrinthulomycetes constitutes a multitude of species found ubiquitously in the environment, and includes pathogens of corals, hard clams, turfgrasses, and seagrasses. Labyrinthula zosterae, the causative agent of seagrass wasting disease, has been associated with declines in seagrass coverage since the 1930s. However, pathogenic and nonpathogenic Labyrinthula spp. have been isolated from seagrass tissue. These isolates are difficult to distinguish morphologically, and the diversity of isolates where seagrass wasting disease is present is often unknown. This study aimed to increase knowledge on the pathogenicity and phylogeny of Labyrinthula spp. in Washington and Oregon, USA where a high prevalence of seagrass wasting disease has been associated with eelgrass, Zostera marina, declines. We tested the pathogenicity of 14 Labyrinthula isolates and compared partial 18S rRNA gene sequences of 12 isolates to sequences from around the world through the NCBI database. We found that pathogenic isolates could be identified as Labyrinthula zosterae, while nonpathogenic isolates did not form a clade with any previously identified SSU ribotypes. These results add to the growing data on Labyrinthula and seagrass wasting disease and can improve our understanding of pathogen evolution and spread in the future.
迷宫菌纲包含大量在环境中普遍存在的物种，其中包括珊瑚、硬壳蛤、草坪草和海草的病原体。海草衰退病的病原体—— zosterae 迷宫菌，自20世纪30年代以来一直与海草覆盖面积的减少有关。然而，已从海草组织中分离出致病性和非致病性的迷宫菌属物种。这些分离株在形态上难以区分，而且在出现海草衰退病的地方，分离株的多样性往往未知。本研究旨在增加对美国华盛顿州和俄勒冈州迷宫菌属物种的致病性和系统发育的了解，在这些地方，海草衰退病的高发病率与大叶藻（Zostera marina）的减少有关。我们测试了14个迷宫菌分离株的致病性，并通过NCBI数据库将12个分离株的部分18S rRNA基因序列与来自世界各地的序列进行了比较。我们发现，致病性分离株可被鉴定为 zosterae 迷宫菌，而非致病性分离株未与任何先前鉴定的小亚基核糖体类型形成一个进化枝。这些结果增加了关于迷宫菌和海草衰退病的越来越多的数据，并有助于我们未来更好地理解病原体的进化和传播。
