Amplification of a Piscirickettsia salmonis-like 16S rDNA Product from Bacterioplankton DNA Collected from the Coastal Waters of Oregon, USA

Abstract

Piscirickettsiosis is a disease observed in salmonids reared in net-pens in the North and South Pacific and in the North Atlantic oceans. Piscirickettsia salmonis, the etiologic agent of piscirickettsiosis, is a gram-negative, obligate, intracellular pathogen that replicates within cytoplasmic vacuoles. We describe here the detection, by dot-blot hybridization, polymerase chain reaction, and sequence analysis, of a 16S rDNA sequence that is 99.5–98.2% similar to the 16S rDNA sequences of known isolates of P. salmonis.