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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2002, p. 5177-5180, Vol. 68, No. 10
0099-2240/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.68.10.5177-5180.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Simultaneous Detection of Aeromonas salmonicida, Flavobacterium psychrophilum, and Yersinia ruckeri, Three Major Fish Pathogens, by Multiplex PCR
A. del Cerro,1 I. Marquez,2 and J. A. Guijarro1*
Área de Microbiología, Departamento de Biología Funcional, Facultad de Medicina, Instituto Universitario de Biotecnología de Asturias, Universidad de Oviedo, 33006 Oviedo,1
SERIDA, Laboratorio de Sanidad Animal de Jove, 33299 Gijón, Asturias, Spain2
Received 18 March 2002/
Accepted 4 July 2002

ABSTRACT
A multiplex PCR assay based on the 16S rRNA genes was developed
for the simultaneous detection of three major fish pathogens,
Aeromonas salmonicida,
Flavobacterium psychrophilum, and
Yersinia ruckeri. The assay proved to be specific and as sensitive as
each single PCR assay, with detection limits in the range of
6, 0.6, and 27 CFU for
A. salmonicida,
F. psychrophilum, and
Y. ruckeri, respectively. The assay was useful for the detection
of the bacteria in artificially infected fish as well as in
fish farm outbreaks. Results revealed that this multiplex PCR
system permits a specific, sensitive, reproducible, and rapid
method for the routine laboratory diagnosis of infections produced
by these three bacteria.

INTRODUCTION
Major pathogens involved in fish farm salmonid infections include
the gram negative species
Flavobacterium psychrophilum,
Yersinia ruckeri, and
Aeromonas salmonicida. They are the etiological
agents of cold water disease, enteric red mouth disease, and
furunculosis, respectively. These pathologies are common worldwide
and produce considerable economic losses in the fish farming
industry.
Cold water disease particularly affects juvenile fish (3), and the causal agent is F. psychrophilum, a fastidious bacterium that is difficult to grow (12). The bacterium causes saddle-like external lesions near the dorsal fin and it can also be found in the mouth, spleen, and brain tissues. The fish may darken and develop bacteremia with the microorganism present throughout the animal. Y. ruckeri is an important pathogen in intensive aquaculture of trout and salmon. Disease outbreaks are related to stress (4), and little information is available about the biology of the bacterium. Infected fish present characteristic red eyes and mouth as well as internal hemorrhages. Diagnostic methods include culturing, serology, and molecular biology techniques (5, 9, 16). A. salmonicida also produces an infection in fish that causes muscle lesions which could produce ulcers on the surface of the skin and lead to septicemia. Different diagnostic methods have been developed, including enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (19, 20), agglutination tests (11), and PCR probes (14).
On the other hand, an efficient selective medium for reducing the growth of the background flora and facilitating the isolation and identification of each of these three bacteria species remains to be described. To combat these infections, vaccination has been shown to be an effective method for the prevention of enteric red mouth disease (17) and, less efficiently, for furunculosis (10, 13), but there is no effective control for cold water disease. In most cases, antimicrobial compounds should be used to control disease outbreaks caused by any of these microorganisms. Thus, a rapid and effective diagnostic method is essential for the application of specific treatment.
Although multiplex PCR (m-PCR) has been widely applied to the detection of multiple viruses and bacteria in clinical specimens (2, 6, 7), it has not been applied to the detection of fish pathogens (1, 15). In this investigation, an m-PCR assay for the simultaneous detection of F. psychrophilum, A. salmonicida, and Y. ruckeri was developed and compared with single PCR assays for each of the bacteria.

Bacterial strains and culture conditions.
To evaluate the m-PCR assay, the bacteria used as positive controls
were (i)
A. salmonicida CECT 4237, LMG 3780, and RSP70.1; (ii)
F. psychrophilum NCIMB 1947
T, NCIMB 1826, T1, FPC 830, 84.254,
SH3-81, Tm.3.1, BC3-81, and SRCO5-90; and (iii)
Y. ruckeri ATCC
29473, 146, 147, 149, and 150. The strains of other species
taxonomically and/or ecologically related that were tested as
negative controls were (i)
Aeromonas hydrophila CECT 4588, CECT
839, and TW401,
Aeromonas encheleia CECT 4341 and CECT 4342,
Aeromonas jandaei CECT 4336 and CECT 4338, and
Aeromonas euchrenophila CECT 4224; (ii)
Flavobacterium johnsoniae UW 101 and
Flavobacterium columnare LMG 13035 and LMG 10397; and (iii)
Yersinia enterocolitica ATCC 27729. Strains were obtained from the following sources:
ATCC strains, American Type Culture Collection, Rockville, Md.;
CECT strains, Coleccción Española de Cultivos
Tipo, Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, Spain; LMG strains,
Laboratorium voor Microbiologie Universiteit Gent, Faculteit
der Wetenschappen, Ghent, Belgium; NCIMB strains, Nationals
Collections of Industrial and Marine Bacteria, Aberdeen, Scotland,
United Kingdom; RSP70.1 and TW401 strains, A. E. Toranzo, Departamento
de Microbiologia, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago,
Spain; T1 strain, Área de Microbiologia, Universidad
de Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain; FPC 830, 84.254, SH3-81, TM 3.1, BC3-81,
and SRCO5-90 strains, J.-F. Bernardet, Unite de Virologie et
Immunologie Moleculaires, Institut National de la Recherche
Agronomique, Jouy-en-Josas, France; VW 101 strain, D. W. Hunnicutt,
Department of Biological Sciences, University of WisconsinMilwaukee;
146, 147, 149, and 150 strains, J. L. Larsen, Danish Veterinary
Laboratory, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Aeromonas spp. were grown in
Trypticase soy nutrient broth (TSB; Merck, Barcelona, Spain);
Y. ruckeri strains were cultured in nutrient broth (Pronadisa,
Madrid, Spain); and Anackel-Ordal medium supplemented with 5%
horse serum (
12) was used for
F. psychrophilum strains.
Aeromonas spp. and
Yersinia spp. strains were incubated at 28°C, whereas
Flavobacterium spp. strains were incubated at 12°C.
F. johnsoniae and
F. columnare strains were grown in 16 g of tryptone, 10
g of yeast extract, and 5 g of NaCl (2XTY) per liter and incubated
at 28°C. All of the cultures were incubated with shaking
at 250 rpm in an orbital incubator.

PCR conditions.
To establish the optimal sensitivity for the m-PCR assay, four
variables were examined in single experiments by using a multifactorial
experimental design in which factors were tested at two levels.
The variables tested were the following: two annealing temperatures
(60 and 55°C), two polymerase concentrations (1 and 1.5
U), two deoxynucleoside triphosphate (dNTP) concentrations (200
and 400 µM), and two MgCl
2 concentrations (2 and 3 mM).
A good intensity of the amplicons for each target DNA, as well
as the absence of unspecific bands, was considered in selecting
the optimal m-PCR conditions. Thus, the best results were obtained
with an annealing temperature of 60°C, 1.5 U of polymerase,
a 200 µM concentration of each dNTP, and 2 mM MgCl
2. Therefore,
PCR was performed in 50-µl reaction mixtures containing
5 to 15 µl of sample as template DNA, a 200 µM concentration
of each dNTP, a 1 µM concentration of each primer (Amersham
Pharmacia Biotech, Barcelona, Spain), and 1.5 U of DNA polymerase
and its amplification buffer (Biotools, Madrid, Spain). Primers
for
A. salmonicida (PAAS1, 5' CGTTGGATATGGCTCTTCT 3'; PAAS2,
5' CTCAAAACGGCTGCGTACCA 3') were described by O'Brien et al.
(
14). The forward primer (FP1, 5' CTTAGTTGGCATCAACAC 3') used
for detection of
F. psychrophilum was described by Urdaci et
al. (
18), but the reverse primer (FP3, 5' ACACTGGCAGTCTTGCTA
3') was designed by us (nucleotides 954 to 971 in the sequence
with GenBank accession number
D12670). Primers used in the detection
of
Y. ruckeri (YER3, 5' CGAGGAGGAAGGGTTAAGT 3'; YER4, 5' AAGGCACCAAGGCATCTCT
3') were modified based on primers described by Gibello et al.
(
5). Thermal cycling was done with a GeneAmp 9700 thermocycler
(Perkin Elmer Instruments, Norwalk, Conn.) with the following
conditions: an initial denaturation cycle at 94°C for 2
min, followed by 35 cycles of amplification (denaturation at
94°C for 40 s, annealing at 60°C for 40 s, and extension
at 72°C for 60 s), and a final 5-min elongation period at
72°C. Reactions with or without template DNA of the three
bacteria were tested in each experiment as positive and negative
controls, respectively. Aliquots of 15 µl of PCR product
were analyzed by electrophoresis on 1.5% agarose gels and stained
with ethidium bromide.

Sensitivity and specificity of the m-PCR assay.
The sensitivity of the m-PCR assay was evaluated using the following
strains:
F. psychrophilum SH3-81,
Y. ruckeri 150, and
A. salmonicida CECT 4237. One milliliter of a stationary-phase culture of each
strain was centrifuged for 5 min at 12,000
x g, the pellet was
resuspended in 50 ml of distilled water, and cells were lysed
by boiling for 10 min. Cell debris was removed by centrifugation
for 30 s at 12,000
x g, and 10-fold serial dilutions of the
supernatant were prepared. Aliquots of 5 µl of each dilution
were removed and mixed together with the respective aliquots
of the other bacteria. A mixture was used as template DNA for
the m-PCR assay. To enumerate the bacteria, serial dilutions
of pure cultures of each bacterium were prepared, and 0.1-ml
aliquots of appropriate dilutions were spread onto TSB agar
for
A. salmonicida CECT 4237, nutrient agar for
Y. ruckeri, and Anackel-Ordal medium supplemented with 5% horse serum with
agar for
F. psychrophilum. Both
A. salmonicida and
Y. ruckeri plates were incubated at 28°C, whereas
F. psychrophilum plates were incubated at 20°C. In these experiments, detection
limits of 27 CFU per m-PCR for
Y. ruckeri, 6 CFU for
A. salmonicida,
and 0.6 CFU for
F. psychrophilum were obtained when pure cultures
were used (Fig.
1A).
To test the sensitivity of the procedure in the presence of
tissue debris, spiked samples were used. Commercial trout liver
was homogenized with Tris-EDTA (TE) buffer (1 mM Tris-HCl, 0.5
mM EDTA [pH 8]) in a 1:10 ratio and seeded with serial dilutions
of a mixture of pure cultures of the three bacterial species.
Cell lysates were obtained by boiling and, after centrifugation
at 12,000
x g for 30 s, 15 µl of each sample was used
for m-PCR analysis. The limits of detection for the spiked samples
were 100 CFU for
F. psychrophilum, 145 CFU for
Y. ruckeri, and
30 CFU for
A. salmonicida (Fig.
1B). All reactions assessing
limits of detection were performed in duplicate and repeated
on different days to confirm the results.
The specificity of the three primer sets was tested (separately or mixed together) using the cell lysates of the 29 strains cited above. An amplification product of the expected size was observed for the nine strains of F. psychrophilum (971 bp), five strains of Y. ruckeri (573 bp), and three strains of A. salmonicida (423 bp) (Fig. 2), but none of these three PCR products or other PCR bands occurred when the cell lysates of the other 12 representative strains were used.

Artificially infected fish and naturally occurring outbreaks.
For artificially infected fish, three groups of 10 rainbow trout
of an approximate size of 6 cm were maintained in 60-liter tanks
at a temperature of 18 ± 1°C for the experiments
carried out with
Y. ruckeri 150 and
A. salmonicida CECT 4237
and at 12 ± 1°C for fish infected with
F. psychrophilum SH3-81. Each trout was intraperitoneally injected with 0.1 ml
of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS; pH 7.2) containing 10
6 cells
of the corresponding bacteria. Ten fish were inoculated with
0.1 ml of PBS for use as controls. Every day for a total of
10 days, dead fish were removed from the experimental tanks
and the livers were removed aseptically and homogenized in TE
buffer in a 10% (wt/vol) suspension. Samples were submitted
to DNA extraction using an InstaGene matrix (Bio-Rad) following
the manufacturer's instructions.
In parallel, a loopful of the fish liver was streaked onto the specific medium for each bacterium and incubated at the corresponding temperature. Fish used as controls were maintained and processed in the same way as the infected ones.
All of the fish infected with Y. ruckeri 150 and A. salmonicida CECT 4237 died within 5 days of injection, and the corresponding amplification products were seen when the DNA extracted from the tissue was submitted to m-PCR. Only 50% of the fish injected with F. psychrophilum died before the end of the experiment, and they showed an amplification product of 971 bp. This result correlates with those found with the bacteriological method. Uninfected fish used as controls did not give false positive results with either method (Fig. 3).
Samples of diseased juvenile fish with an infection from different
salmonid fish farms in Asturias (Spain) were analyzed for the
presence of these three pathogens by m-PCR. Each sample was
processed as described for artificially infected fish, and a
final diagnosis of the affected fish was made by identification
of the bacteria growing in the media under the conditions previously
described for each species. In the m-PCR assay the amplification
products corresponding to
Y. ruckeri (573 bp) and
F. psychrophilum (971 bp) were obtained (Fig.
3).
m-PCR assays have been developed for the detection of fish viruses (22), but only a single similar assay has been established for other pathogens of fish (1). We have developed an m-PCR assay that can detect three of the main fish pathogens: F. psychrophilum, Y. ruckeri, and A. salmonicida.
The specificity of our assay was verified by performing the m-PCR with lysates from F. psychrophilum, Y. ruckeri, A. salmonicida, and 12 different taxonomically and/or ecologically related bacteria. None of these related bacteria gave the corresponding amplification product. Therefore, the primers described here proved to be specific under the conditions assayed. These results are in agreement with those obtained by Urdaci et al. (18) for F. psychrophilum, Gibello et al. (5) for Y. ruckeri, and O'Brien et al. (14) for A. salmonicida when using single PCR.
Our m-PCR assay could detect as few as 27 CFU of Y. ruckeri, 6 CFU of A. salmonicida, and 0.6 CFU of F. psychrophilum in pure cultures and could detect 145 Y. ruckeri, 30 A. salmonicida, and 102 F. psychrophilum CFU in spiked samples. These results are similar to those previously reported in the literature, in which detection limits of 60 to 65 cells for Y. ruckeri (5) and 0.4 cells for F. psychrophilum (21) in pure cultures were found. For A. salmonicida, a limit of detection of 2.4 cells was reported when using a slot blot hybridization technique (8). In experiments with spiked samples, sensitivities of 2 x 104 CFU/g of tissue for Y. ruckeri (5) and 200 cells/g of sample for A. salmonicida (14) have been described.
These results, together with those obtained in in vivo experiments, indicate that this procedure is a highly sensitive and specific method for detecting these three bacterial species in fish farm outbreaks. Thus, a rapid and reliable diagnosis of disease could be carried out in a single PCR assay.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by grant 1FD97-0426 to J.A.G.
We thank J.-F. Bernadet, J. L. Larsen, D. W. Hunnicut, and A. E. Toranzo for sending us different strains. Finally, we extend our thanks to the "Asociación de Piscicultores de Asturias."

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Área de Microbiología, Departamento de Biología Funcional. Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Oviedo, 33006 Oviedo, Asturias, Spain. Phone: 34985104218. Fax: 34985103148. E-mail:
jaga{at}sauron.quimica.uniovi.es.


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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2002, p. 5177-5180, Vol. 68, No. 10
0099-2240/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/AEM.68.10.5177-5180.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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