Volume 53

Sources, Distribution, and Conveyance of Opportunistic Pathogens in Estuaries and the Oceans


Authors
Grimes, D.J.
Download PDF Open PDF in Browser

Other Information


Date: 2002


Pages: 1-9


Event: Proceedings of the Fifty Third Annual Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute


City: Fort Pierce, Florida


Country: USA

Abstract

In 1981, water samples collected from 14 stations distributed along a track-line from Barbados to Bermuda revealed a preponderance of bacteria belonging to the genus Vibrio (Grimes et al. 1984a). Ten years earlier, using the same experimental design along the same approximate track-line, Sieburth (1971) had reported that nearly 100% of the culturable bacterial isolates belonged to the genus Pseudomonas. Explanations offered for this apparent shift in the dominance of culturable bacteria included chronic pollution of the ocean with anthropogenic hydrocarbons, resulting in the selection of hydrocarbon-degrading vibrios (Grimes et al. 1984a). It is well known that some species Vibrio cause a variety of diseases in marine fishes, marine invertebrates, and humans. Vibrio species are also autochthonous inhabitants of estuaries and the oceans, and they possess an array of degradative enzymes that allow them to metabolize compounds ranging from chitin and squalene to short chain fatty acids and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Clearly, the vibrios possess an impressive set of habitat-adaptive enzymes, and this general adaptation was recently confirmed forone species by the completion of the genomic sequence of V. cholerae (Heidelberg et al. 2000). In 1997 and 1998, the largest outbreaks of human disease ever caused by V. Parahaemolyticus in North America occurred from the consumption of contaminated oysters. Interestingly, these years were also years of increased sea surface temperature associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation, and V. Parahaemolyticus grows best undermesophilic conditions. The focus of this paper will be the niches that are filled by members of the bacterial genus Vibrio that are capable of degrading anthropogenic compounds, responding to global climate change, and infecting and causing disease in vertebrate and invertebrate hosts.

PDF Preview