Abstract
Streptococcus agalactiae is a highly invasive pathogen causing streptococcosis in aquaculture, globally. The potential use of lytic bacteriophage is considered as safe antimicrobials against the milieu of global antibiotic resistance in treating bacterial infections. Hence, in this study, a novel bacteriophage, Streptococcus phage-1A was isolated from infected tilapia farm against S. agalactiae. In the morphometric analysis by HR-TEM, Streptococcus phage-1A exhibited an isometric head (101.52 ± 2 nm) and short contractile tail (62.60 ± 1 nm), of the family Myoviridae. The phage has a short latent period (20 min) and high burst size of about 119 PFU/cell. PCR-based screening revealed its obligate lytic nature and could reveal the genomic diversity of the phage by RAPD. The phage was found to be stable at varying range of temperature, pH, and salinity. Protective efficiency of phage-1A was evaluated against S. agalactiae by challenge experiment in tilapia by 3 modes of application viz. IP, oral, and bath treatments. During the challenge experiment, it was found that there was a significant decrease in the count of S. agalactiae in phage treated fish organs compared to that of controls. Among the treatment trials, bath therapy was found to be more effective with 80.01% RPS comparing to IP (70.02%) and oral (50.04%) mode of administration. This is the first report on isolation, characterization, and application of bacteriophage against S. agalactiae from India and the Streptococcus phage-1A isolated in this study could demonstrate its high protective ability against streptococcal infection in tilapia.
Highlights
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Streptococcus phage-1A, a specific lytic Myoviridae phage was isolated from tilapia aquaculture farm against Streptococcus agalactiae and it showed high burst size and high productivity at an MOI of 0.01.
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Viability under different temperature and stability at different pH and salinity showed its efficiency in the elimination of Streptococcus agalactiae at each parameter.
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Phage therapy against Streptococcus agalactiae challenged tilapia by bath therapy was found effective with 80.01% RPS comparing to other mode of application such as intra peritoneal injection (70.02%) and orally through phage-coated feed (50.04%).
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The present study suggests bath therapy as a best mode of application of Streptococcus phage-1A in treating Streptococcus agalactiae infection in tilapia.
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Data availability
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Code availability
Not applicable.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS) for the financial support to carry out the work. We acknowledge Faculty of Fisheries Science for providing microbiology laboratory facility of the Department of Fish Processing Technology, Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS). We are grateful to Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (ICAR-CMFRI) for providing bacterial isolate for this study.
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Rajan Preenanka: investigation, writing—original draft, visualization. Muhammed P Safeena: conceptualization, methodology, validation, writing—reviewing and editing. Rahul Krishnan: validation, writing—reviewing and editing.
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Challenge experiment was performed according to the guidelines of the committee for the purpose of control and supervision of experiments on animals (CPCSEA) registration number 1174/ac/08/CPCSEA. The protocol was reviewed and approved by the institutional animal ethics committee of Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS), India.
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Preenanka, R., Safeena, M.P. & Krishnan, R. Evaluation of therapeutic potential of Streptococcus phage-1A against Streptococcus agalactiae infection in Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus). Aquacult Int 31, 1439–1456 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-022-01036-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-022-01036-w