Progress 10/01/13 to 09/30/16
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences for this project have remained consistent, and include industry, regulatory agencies, environmental groups, students, public citizens, extension specialists and fellow scientists interested in shellfish safety. We have worked directly with the shellfish industry, conducting research with Spinney Creek Shellfish Inc. of Eliot ME and with several NH, MA and CT oyster farmers through our extended work with state agencies in these states. We have continued to engaged industry, often in collaboration with extension specialists, indirectly through small meetings with CT, MA, ME and NH growers and other industry groups, and in larger joint meetings with regulatory agencies and at science-industry-regulatory agency seminars and conferences, including the n Advancing Tools for Modeling, Forecasting and Managing for Vibrio spp. in the North East Region Workshop in November 2015 at Avery Point, CT, the Milford Aquaculture Seminar in Shelton, CT in January 2016, and the National Shellfisheries Association/World Aquaculture Society meeting in February, 2016 in Las Vegas, NV. We have also shared our findings with fellow microbial ecologists at the International Society for Microbial Ecology meeting in Montreal, Quebec in August 2016 and have maintained productive collaborations with public health and resource state agencies in NH, MA, ME and CT. Our interactions with the latter include small group and medium size seminar meetings with agency personnel interested in our approaches for detection of total populations and pathogenic strains of Vibrio species, our strategies for post-harvest treatment to reduce Vibrio levels, and working together to design effective monitoring and research studies to develop the capacity for forecasting risk conditions related to pathogenic Vibrio populations for shellfish harvest management. We have provided information on the public health significance, ecology and management of pathogenic Vibrio species to environmental groups, students, universities (UNH, Univ. of Maine-Orono) and the public via seminars, classes and small group meetings and discussions, and in press releases. Finally, we have discussed our research findings and plans with fellow scientists via presentations at international, national, state and local meetings, teleconferences, and through publications. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Utilization of Illumina high throughput sequencing analysis is a platform that has become a powerful tool when analyzing bacterial communities and populations in microbial ecology. This platform is a key resource for the UNH Vibrio Center for Excellence. Through the work of this project and others we have established a pipeline for effectively analyzing microbial communities and strains of pathogenic Vibrio species. We have established protocols and baseline work for these microbial analyses that are now being used for ongoing project work and training of students. Graduate students Michael Taylor and Meghan Hartwick have both successfully used this tool to analyze microbial communities in oysters and analyze different strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, respectively. Undergraduate student Jackie Lemaire has also successfully used these tools to analyze populations of Vibrio parahaemolyticus from an oyster relay site in Maine. She presented her preliminary results at the UNH-COLSA Undergraduate Research Conference, while Meghan Hartwick presented her research results at the International Society for Microbial Ecology meeting in Montreal, CA. Graduate students have been included at other professional conferences and small group meetings with shellfish industry and regulators for informal presentations and discussions of their research. Meghan Hartwick has also become skilled with statistical models and database analysis tools through several key classes at UNH that she is using to develop predictive risk models. She has also undertaken the training of undergraduate and fellow graduate students in these skills. Meghan and several undergraduate students have also learned from local experts how to identify plankton taxa from estuarine samples. Through collaborations with faculty and students at UNH and other institutions, we have continued to optimize procedures for effective sampling, processing, and analysis of estuarine bacterial and plankton communities. In both field and laboratory studies, we continue to train graduate students to apply these procedures in their research. In turn, the graduate students have been able to provide training opportunities for undergraduate students from several UNH departments and from both Great Bay Community College and Keene State University. Our research findings have also served to inform public health and resource agency personnel, shellfish growers, students and public citizens about risks and how to avoid them so as to enjoy and benefit from shellfish consumption. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The project results have been disseminated through a variety of mechanisms to a variety of interested communities. We have continued to work with extensions specialists from UNH to inform NH, CT, ME and MA oyster farmers about harvest management options to reduce risks from pathogenic Vibrios to consumers. We have continued to inform the NH Shellfish Program Manager and FDA in separate local meetings about our research findings that can inform best management practices for oyster growers to manage risks from Vibrios in their harvest practices. Shellfish industry and state regulatory agencies were the targeted audiences for several scientific presentations about pathogenic Vibrios in the Northeast at the Milford Aquaculture Seminar/Northeast Aquaculture Conference and Exposition in January 2016 and at the National Shellfisheries Association/World Aquaculture Society meeting in February 2016 in a session on Vibrios co-chaired by the PI. The PI was the invited plenary speaker and a graduate student also presented at a NOAA and US FDA-supported workshop entitled 'Advancing Tools for Modeling, Forecasting and Managing for Vibrio species in the Northeast US' in November 2015. Several meetings with regional shellfish resource and public health agencies were held during the past year to discuss ongoing and emerging issues and to provide them with research findings from this and related projects at UNH. These included several teleconference meetings with representatives from regional (ME to MD) and national (NOAA, FDA) agencies and growers' associations to plan and hold a regional Vibrio forecasting workshop in late fall, 2015. Several meetings and discussions were held via telephone and in person with NH Shellfish Program, NH Department of Health and Human Services, and US Food and Drug Administration personnel to discuss trends in Vibrio populations in NH coastal waters and strategies to reduce risk through managing harvest techniques. We also held numerous conversations with shellfish growers about post-harvest practices to reduce Vibrio-associated health risks, and with shellfish processers to help develop strategies to remove or reduce levels of Vibrios in harvested live oysters. A key meeting where the findings from this study were disseminated was the International Society for Microbial Ecology in Montreal, CA in August 2016. Meghan Hartwick presented her work on phytoplankton populations and their influence on Vibrio parahaemolyticus levels in oysters. Microbial ecologists and other scientists from all over the world were in attendance and discussed the presentation made by the PI and its implications for managing human illnesses caused by Vibrios across the globe. The research findings were also disseminated to fellow UNH scientists, students, administrators and parents at the UNH Undergraduate Research Conference in April 2016 where undergraduate student Jackie Lemaire presented a poster presentation on her work with Vibrio parahaemlyticus population variations. Finally, UNH students were provided information about project findings to help them learn about public health risks in marine ecosystems and learn of training opportunities in several early year classes in Environmental Engineering Microbiology and Marine, Estuarine and Freshwater Biology during Fall 2015/Winter 2016 semesters. Fellow graduate students and faculty in the Molecular, Cellular and Biomedical Sciences Department also learned about project findings as part of seminar presentations by PhD students Meghan Hartwick and Michael Taylor during Fall 2014/Winter 2015 semesters. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The threat of shellfish-borne disease from Vibrio parahaemolyticus (Vp) and Vibrio vulnificus (Vv) is a significant public health concern in the US. Changes in pathogenic Vibrio populations in the coastal waters of the Northeast US are an emerging concern and are likely consequences of changing environmental conditions. In the Northeast, outbreaks of Vp infections starting in 2011 from consumption of Cape Cod Bay and Long Island Sound oysters caused public health scares and significant losses for regional industry. To combat this problem, the main research needs are to develop accurate methods for predicting risk conditions, develop better detection methods for monitoring pathogenic Vibrio species in harvest areas and in clinical samples, and to develop locale-specific harvest management plans and post-harvest strategies to prevent human illness from shellfish consumption. Pathogenic Vibrios have a limited range of conditions related to seasonal climatic factors that are conducive to their prevalence. Regional knowledge of these conditions can be used to develop predictive models of risk conditions and to reproduce more controlled processing and management strategies. Project PIs have previously demonstrated that transporting or "relaying" shellfish to elevated salinity conditions successfully reduces levels of pathogenic Vibrios. This project addresses some fundamental questions related to the ecology of Vibrios that are key to understanding disease transmission via shellfish consumption, why relaying is effective, how climate change effects these pathogenic bacteria that are best suited to warm conditions, and the potential for their increased significance in what are still colder Northeast environments. The research to date has continued to result in significant changes in our knowledge about the dynamics of Vibrios in shellfish in Northeast US estuarine ecosystems. We have found evidence that sea surface temperatures in regional larger coastal ecosystems, like the Gulf of Maine and Long Island Sound, influence Vibrio species populations in near-shore coastal and estuarine ecosystems. Our ongoing surveillance of Vibrio concentrations in water, shellfish, sediments and now plankton suggests that association with plankton are a significant ecosystem factor that enhance Vibrio populations, and that factors conducive to detection by remote sensing may aid our need to track and predict risk conditions. We have also continued to provide much-needed knowledge about new detection tools to track the emergence of pathogenic strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in the Northeast as a result of our collaborations with state public health and resource agencies. Working in collaboration with Dr. Cheryl Whistler's laboratory at UNH, we have shown that clinical Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains in MA, NH and ME were locally derived strains through 2011, and thereafter were dominated by a strain (ST36) that appears to have derived from Pacific Northwest populations, and to a lesser extent by strain ST631. Using a new genetic sequencing approach, we identified diagnostic genes from the ST36 and ST631 type strains for use as molecular marker amplification (PCR) assays to identify clinical strains and to aid in surveillance of these strains in coastal ecosystems. This is a significant improvement in our vibrio surveillance toolbox, and we have leveraged funds to apply this approach beyond the Great Bay estuary, including shellfish harvest areas in MA and CT. Our tiered approach for detection and enumeration of pathogenic Vibrio species in coastal ecosystems has been further optimized based on new findings. Over the past year, we have further expanded our routine, biweekly surveillance and have refined our assessment of plankton as an ecosystem matrix for tracking Vibrio population dynamics. PhD and undergraduate students have vastly improved our accurately assess plankton biomass and to identify taxa of estuarine zooplankton and phytoplankton. Overall, Vibrio parahaemolyticus populations in the Great Bay estuary during late 2015-2016 were present at levels comparable at times to those observed during the peak year in 2012, suggesting the population has adapted to new conditions, even though the number of Vibrio parahaemolyticus infections in the Northeast has decreased, reflecting cooler Gulf of Maine and Long Island Sound conditions and institution of better harvest management strategies. We have recently gained significant progress in our application of statistical models to more accurately explain variations in Vibrio parahaemolyticus populations. These more sophisticated models allow us to differentially and additively explain variation using some or all of certain ecosystem factors we have found to be significant, including water temperature, salinity, pH and chlorophyll a concentration, a surrogate for phytoplankton levels. This work will be published soon and should provide unique new approaches for predicting risk conditions that should be transferable to other areas beyond Great Bay. Our understanding of conditions that allow for reducing pathogenic Vibrio levels in harvested shellfish has also been enhanced through efforts lead by a PhD student, Michael Taylor and informed by discussions and oversight by Mr. Thomas Howell of Spinney Creek Shellfish Inc. in Eliot ME. The overall results suggest that relay can be a viable strategy for post-harvest treatment to reduce Vibrio concentrations in oysters within 14 days, as long as the site to which shellfish are relayed contains low to undetectable vibrios. The underlying mechanisms for why this happens continue to be the focus of our research. Trends in Vibrio and non-Vibrio bacterial taxa in oysters during the relay process have been tracked using metagenomic analysis through the Illumina platform. The bacterial sequence data were analyzed using high throughput sequence analysis software to show which bacteria increase when pathogenic Vibrio species decrease, and thus may be involved in competitive exclusion of pathogenic Vibrio species during the relay process. The change in the microbial community associated with successful relaying (reduction of Vibrio parahaemolyticus levels) was repeatedly consistent, with final microbial community taxa being similar for all successful relaying samples. We had several relaying trials during late 2012 and all through the summer of 2013 where relaying was unsuccessful. For these oysters, the shift in the microbial community was again consistent but completely different than observed for successful relay samples, with different community profiles in both the harvest site and the relayed oysters. These findings help us to understand conditions and microbial community members that may prevent the success of oyster relaying for reducing Vibrio parahaemolyticus levels. Ten bacterial taxa identified from this approach and cultured from oyster and estuarine water samples collected during relay were then used in in vitro competition experiments against local Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains. Two species enhanced the growth of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, while two Vibrio species were the best competitors against Vibrio parahaemolyticus. These findings provide the basis to select candidate species to further test for exclusion of pathogenic Vibrio species from harvested shellfish. We have continued to collaborate with Dr. Lorne Launen at Keene State College in Keene NH and with Dr. Anita Wright at the Univ. of FL on analyzing strains of locally isolated Vibrio vulnificus. Sequencing analysis is underway at Dr. Launen's lab on Vibrio vulnificus strains we have provided to her from our Great Bay estuary samples. Our students are working together with hers to conduct these analyses and to start determining what ecosystem conditions are conducive to their proliferation and disappearance.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Urquhart, E.A., S.H. Jones, J.W. Yu, B.M. Schuster, A.L. Marcinkiewicz, C.A. Whistler and V.S. Cooper. 2016. Environmental conditions associated with Elevated Vibrio parahaemolyticus concentrations in Great Bay estuary, New Hampshire. PLoS ONE 11(5): e0155018: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0155018.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Xu F, N Gonzalez-Escalona, J Haendiges, R Myers, J Ferguson, T Stiles, E Hickey, M Moore, J Hickey, C Shillaci, L Mank, K DeRosia-Banick, N Matluk, A Robbins, R Sebra, V Cooper, S Jones, and C Whistler. Accepted. Vibrio parahaemolyticus sequence type 631, an emerging foodborne pathogen in North America. J. Clin. Microbiol. Paper #JCM02162-16
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Jones S, Urquhart E, Hartwick M, Whistler C, Cooper V. 2016. Empirical Modeling of Vibrio parahaemolyticus Presence and Concentration in New Hampshire Shellfish, p. 21. In Blogoslawski WJ, Milke L, editors. 2016. 36th Milford Aquaculture Seminar. US Dept�of Commerce, Northeast Fish Sci Cent Ref Doc. 16-06; 52 p. Available from: National Marine�Fisheries Service, 166 Water Street, Woods Hole, MA 02543-1026, or online at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/ 2015
|
Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/15
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audiences for this project have remained consistent, and include industry, regulatory agencies, environmental groups, students, public citizens, extension specialists and fellow scientists interested in shellfish safety. We have worked directly with shellfish industry, conducting research with Spinney Creek Shellfish Inc. of Eliot ME, Island Creek Oysters of Duxbury MA, and several NH and CT oyster farmers. We have also engaged industry, often in collaboration with extension specialists, indirectly through small meetings with CT, MA, ME and NH growers and other industry groups, and in larger joint meetings with regulatory agencies and at science-industry-regulatory agency seminars and conferences, including the International Conference on Molluscan Shellfish Sanitation (ICMSS) in Puerto Varas Chile in March 2015 and the Northeast Aquaculture Conference and Exposition (NACE) in Portland, ME in January 2015. We have also forged successful collaborations with public health and resource state agencies in NH, MA, ME and CT. Our interactions include small group and medium size seminar meetings with agency personnel interested in our approaches for detection of total populations and pathogenic strains of Vibrio species, our strategies for post-harvest treatment to reduce Vibrio levels, and working together to design effective monitoring and research studies to develop the capacity for forecasting risk conditions related to pathogenic Vibrio populations for shellfish harvest management. We have provided information on the public health significance, ecology and management of pathogenic Vibrio species to environmental groups, students, universities (UNH, Univ. of Maine-Orono) and the public via seminars, classes and small group meetings and discussions, and in press releases. Finally, we have discussed our research findings and plans with fellow scientists via presentations at international, national, state and local meetings, teleconferences, and through publications. Changes/Problems:Although we continue to track all thre target Vibrio species, we have steered most of our efforts into the study of V. parahaemolyticus, as it is more prevalent, present at higher levels and in association with numerous ecosystem matrices, and it is by far the vibrio species of most concern to the region at present. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Utilization of Illumina high throughput sequencing analysis is a platform that has become a powerful tool when analyzing bacterial communities and populations in microbial ecology. This platform is a key resource for the UNH Vibrio Center for Excellence. Through the work of this project and others we have established a pipeline for effectively analyzing microbial communities and strains of pathogenic Vibrio species. We have established protocols and baseline work for these microbial analyses that are now being used for ongoing project work and training of students. Through collaborations with faculty and students at UNH and other institutions, we have continued to optimize a pipeline of procedures for effective analysis of estuarine bacterial and plankton communities. In both field and laboratory studies, we continue to train graduate students to apply these procedures in their research. In turn, the graduate students have been able to provide training opportunities for undergraduate students from several UNH departments and from both Great Bay Community College and Keene State University. The PI attended many important shellfish meetings this year and benefited professionally from participating with other scientists, industry and regulatory experts in discussing and making efforts to change policies and best management practices related to shellfish harvesting and management. Our research findings have also served to inform public health and resource agency personnel, shellfish growers, students and public citizens about risks and how to avoid them so as to enjoy and benefit from shellfish consumption. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The project results have been disseminated to a variety of interested communities. We have continued to work with extensions specialists from UNH to inform NH oyster farmers about harvest management options to reduce risks from pathogenic Vibrios to consumers. We also teamed with the NH Shellfish Program Manager and FDA in separate local meetings to inform oyster growers about how to manage risks from Vibrios in their harvest practices. Shellfish industry and state regulatory agencies were the targeted audiences for several scientific presentations about pathogenic Vibrios in the Northeast at the Northeast Aquaculture Conference and Exposition in January 2015 in a session on Vibrios chaired by the PI. Several meetings with regional shellfish resource and public health agencies were held during the past year to discuss ongoing and emerging issues and to provide them with research findings from this and related projects at UNH. These included one formal seminar presentation in Boston to the Directors and other personnel from the MA Department of Public Health and MA Division of Marine Fisheries Director on the analysis of clinical strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus to determine their sources and relatedness in May 2015. Several teleconference meetings were held with representatives from regional (ME to MD) and national (NOAA, FDA) agencies and growers associations to plan a regional Vibrio forecasting workshop in late fall, 2015. Several meetings and discussions via telephone and in person with NH Shellfish Program, NH Department of Health and Human Services, and US Food and Drug Administration personnel to discuss trends in Vibrio populations in NH coastal waters and strategies to reduce risk through managing harvest techniques. A key meeting where the findings from this study were disseminated was the International Conference on Molluscan Shellfish Safety in Puerto Varas, Chile in March, 2015. Scientists, regulators, and growers from all over the world were in attendance and discussed the presentation made by the PI and its implications for managing human illnesses caused by Vibrios across the globe. The research findings were also disseminated to fellow scientists at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in New Orleans, LA in May 2015, and both the New England Association of Environmental Biologists (NEAEB) & NH Water and Watershed Conference and the Maine Sustainability & Water Conference in several oral an poster presentations to audiences made up of resource managers, policy and decision makers and fellow scientists. Finally, UNH students were provide information about project findings to help them learn about public health risks in marine ecosystems and learn of training opportunities in several early year classes in Environmental Engineering and Marine, Estuarine and Freshwater Biology during Fall 2014/Winter 2015 semesters. Fellow graduate students and faculty in the Molecular, Cellular and Biomedical Sciences Department also learned about project findings as part of seminar presentations by two graduate students involved in this project and the PI during Fall 2014/Winter 2015 semesters. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We have wrapped up the research portion of one PhD dissertation focused on understanding the mechanism by which shellfish relaying can reduce Vibrio populations. The findings from that work are currently of keen interest to growers who are facing increasing costs at harvest to control temperature abuse of oysters, and relaying could help with that and other issues they face. We are also exploring opportunities to apply the research findings at two local commercial shellfish processing facilities, one privately owned and one state (MA) owned. Our efforts will also continue in further refining and expanding efforts to better understand several key relationships that are critical for developing risk condition forecasting. We will continue to study plankton and Vibrios, and how they mutually affect estuarine microbial population dynamics. We also seek to understand the relationship between total and pathogenic vibrios, why their concentrations are so variable, and we will track the ecology of pathogenic strains of V. parahaemolyticus using newly developed detection methods. These plans are driven by several factors, including grower and regulator needs, and the fact that these questions are at the cutting edge of vibrio research. The ultimate goal is to have the capacity to forecast risk conditions to enable effective shellfish harvest management, although we expect an ongoing need to track vibrio populations as climatic and water quality factors continue to change.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Commercial shellfish harvesting and public health are being threatened by the emerging incidence of illness caused by Vibrio, a group or potentially pathogenic bacterial species, in consumers of shellfish from the Northeastern U.S. Where New England states with colder coastal ecosystems had rare disease occurrence in the past, recent increases in disease incidence has triggered increased harvest management and monitoring efforts for industry and public health agencies that have increased costs to both groups. The research to date has continued to result in significant changes in our knowledge about the dynamics of Vibrios in shellfish in Northeast US estuarine ecosystems. Conditions, as in sea surface temperatures, in regional larger coastal ecosystems like the Gulf of Maine and Long Island Sound also appear to influence Vibrio species populations in near-shore coastal and estuarine ecosystems. Our ongoing surveillance of Vibrio concentrations in water, shellfish and sediments now suggests that association with plankton is a significant ecosystem factor that affects Vibrio populations, and that remote sensing may aid our need to track and predict risk conditions. We have also continued to provide much needed knowledge about and new detection tools to track the emergence of pathogenic strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in the Northeast as a result of our collaborations with state public health and resource agencies. Working in collaboration with Dr. Cheryl Whistler's laboratory at UNH, we have shown that clinical Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains in MA, NH and ME were locally derived strains through 2011, and thereafter by a strain (ST36) that appears to have derived from Pacific Northwest populations. Using a new genetic sequencing approach, we identified diagnostic genes from the ST36 type strains for use as a molecular marker amplification (PCR) assay to identify clinical strains and to aid in surveillance of these strains in coastal ecosystems. Our tiered approach for detection and enumeration of pathogenic Vibrio species in coastal ecosystems has been further optimized based on new findings. Over the past year we have further expanded our routine, biweekly surveillance and have refined our approach in adding plankton as an ecosystem matrix for tracking Vibrio population dynamics. PhD and undergraduate students have continued to work with plankton ecologists to refine sampling and separation methods for estuarine zooplankton and phytoplankton. Overall, Vibrio parahaemolyticus populations in the Great Bay estuary during late 2014-2015 were present at levels comparable at times to those observed during the peak year in 2012, and the number of Vibrio parahaemolyticus infections in the Northeast decreased, reflecting cooler Gulf of Maine and Long Island Sound conditions and institution of better harvest management strategies. Our understanding of conditions that allow for reducing pathogenic Vibrio levels in harvested shellfish has also been enhanced through efforts lead by a PhD student, Michael Taylor. The overall results suggest that relay can be a viable strategy for post-harvest treatment to reduce Vibrio concentrations in oysters within 14 days, as long as the site to which shellfish are relayed contains low to undetectable vibrios. The underlying mechanisms for why this happens continue to be the focus of our research. Trends in Vibrio and non-Vibrio bacterial taxa in oysters during the relay process have been tracked using metagenomic analysis through the Illumina platform. The bacterial sequence data were analyzed using high throughput sequence analysis software to show which bacteria increase when pathogenic Vibrio species decrease, and thus may be involved in competitive exclusion of pathogenic Vibrio species during the relay process. Ten taxa identified from this approach and cultured from oyster and estuarine water samples collected during relay were then used in in vitro competition experiments against local Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains. Two species enhanced the growth of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, while the other eight impeded growth and outcompeted Vibrio parahaemolyticus, with two Vibrio species being the best competitors. These findings provide the basis to select candidate species to further test for exclusion of pathogenic Vibrio species from harvested shellfish.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Xu, F., S. Ilyas, J. A. Hall, S. H. Jones, V. S. Cooper & C. A. Whistler. 2015. Genetic characterization of clinical and environmental Vibrio parahaemolyticus from the Northeast USA reveals emerging resident and non-indigenous pathogen lineages. Front. Microbiol. 6: 272
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Whistler, C.W., J. A. Hall, F. Xu, S. Ilyas, P. Siwakoti, S. H. Jones and V. S. Cooper. 2015. Use of whole-genome phylogeny and comparisons for development of a multiplex PCR assay to identify sequence type 36 Vibrio parahaemolyticus. J. Clin. Microbiol. 53: 1864-1872.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Taylor M, J Yu, CA Whistler, V Cooper, T Howell and S Jones 2014. Treatment time and environmental factors affect the reduction of Vibrio parahaemolyticus concentrations in relayed oysters (Crassostrea virginica). Pp 98-101, In, McLeod et al. (eds). Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Molluscan Shellfish Safety, Sydney, 17-22 March 2013. ISBN-13: 978-0-646-92993-4.
|
Progress 10/01/13 to 09/30/14
Outputs
Target Audience: The target audiences for this project include industry, regulatory agencies, environmental groups, students, public citizens, extension specialists and fellow scientists interested in shellfish safety. We have worked directly with shellfish industry, conducting research with Spinney Creek Shellfish Inc. of Eliot ME, Island Creek Oysters of Duxbury MA, and several NH and CT oyster farmers. We have also engaged industry, often in collaboration with extension specialists, indirectly through small meetings with CT, MA and NH growers and other industry groups, and in larger joint meetings with regulatory agencies and at science-industry-regulatory agency seminars and conferences, including the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC) in San Antonio TX in January 2014 and the Milford Aquaculture Seminar in CT in February 2014. We have also forged great collaborations with public health and resource state agencies in NH, MA, ME and CT. Our interactions include small group and medium size seminar meetings with agency personnel interested in our approaches to detection of total populations and pathogenic strains of Vibrio species, our strategies for post-harvest treatment to reduce Vibrio levels, and working together to design effective monitoring and research studies to assess trends in Vibrio populations and to test out new approaches for shellfish harvest management. We have provided information on the public health significance, ecology and management of pathogenic Vibrio species to environmental groups, students, universities (UNH, Univ. of Maine-Orono) and the public via seminars, classes and small group meetings and discussions, and in press releases. Finally, we have discussed our research findings and plans with fellow scientists via presentations at national, state and local meetings, teleconferences, and through publications. Changes/Problems: There have been no significant issues and problems with this project to date, but we have shifted emphasis within our tiered monitoring approach to better characterize Vibrio populations in estuarine ecosystems and to track pathogenic strains. We will be applying newly developed methods to detect pathogenic strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus, and continuing to refine understanding of relationship between plankton populations and Vibrio populations. The latter effort has as a goal to develop a remote sensing approach for, eventually, predicting conditions that pose risks to the shellfish industry and consumers. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Through collaborations with faculty and students at UNH and other institutions, we have continued to optimize a pipeline of procedures for effective analysis of estuarine bacterial and plankton communities. In both field and laboratory studies, we continue to train graduate students to apply these procedures in their research. In turn, the graduate students have been able to provide training opportunities for undergraduate students from several UNH departments and from both Great Bay Community College and Keene State University. The PI attended the ISSC this year and benefited professionally from participating with other scientists, industry and regulatory experts in a multiple committee approach to changing policies related to shellfish harvesting and management. Our research findings have also served to inform public health and resource agency personnel, shellfish growers, students and public citizens about risks and how to avoid them so as to enjoy and benefit from shellfish consumption. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? The project results have been disseminated to a variety of interested communities. We worked with extensions specialists from UNH to educate NH oyster farmers about harvest management options to reduce risks from pathogenic Vibrios to consumers. We also teamed with state resource agency personnel from both NH and CT in separate local meetings to inform oyster growers about how to manage risks from Vibrios in their harvest practices. Shellfish industry and state regulatory agencies were the targeted audiences for scientific presentations about pathogenic Vibrios in the Northeast at the Milford Aquaculture Seminar and the ensuing Northeast Shellfish Sanitation Association annual meeting in CT in February 2014. These meetings included an intervening panel on Vibrios in shellfish in which the PI, industry experts, regulatory agencies and regional extension specialists discussed approaches for tracking and managing risks from environmental Vibrios for the shellfish industry and regulatory agencies. Several meetings with regional shellfish resource and public health agencies were held during the past year to provide them with research findings from this and related projects at UNH. These included one formal seminar presentation at he MA Division of Marine Fisheries offices in Gloucester MA in October 2013, an October 2013 teleconference meeting with the CT Department of Agriculture/Bureau of Aquaculture, Department of Public Health and NOAA scientists to discuss effective approaches for tracking Vibrio populations in CT coastal waters and rapid and effective clinical Vibrio strain identification, another meeting where we teamed with CT agency and extension specialists and US Food and Drug Administration shellfish experts in CT in December 2013 to discuss with oyster growers how to effectively manage oyster harvesting to reduce risks of disease to consumers, a meeting with the MA Department of Public Health Director and other personnel to discuss the analysis of clinical strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus to determine source and relatedness in January 2014 in Boston, and several meetings and discussions via telephone and in person with NH Shellfish Program, NH Department of Health and Human Services, and US Food and Drug Administration personnel about trends of Vibrio populations in NH coastal waters and strategies to reduce risk through managing harvest techniques. The PI also presented NH and regional data on Vibrios in shellfish and human infection cases to the MA Shellfish Officers Association at their annual meeting in March 2014. The research findings were also disseminated to fellow scientists at the National Shellfisheries Association annual meeting in Florida in April 2014 and at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in Boston MA in May 2014. Finally, UNH students were provide information about project findings to help them learn about public health risks in marine ecosystems and learn of training opportunities in several early year classes in Chemical Engineering and Marine, Estuarine and Freshwater Biology during Fall 2013. Fellow graduate students and faculty in the Molecular, Cellular and Biomedical Sciences Department also learned about project findings as part of seminar presentations by four graduate students involved in this project during Fall 2013/Winter 2014 semesters. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We will be wrapping up the research portion of one PhD dissertation focused on understanding the mechanism by which shellfish relaying can reduce Vibrio populations. The findings from that work will be applied at a local commercial shellfish processing facility. Our efforts will also continue in further refining and expanding efforts to better understand the relationship between plankton and Vibrios, and how they mutually affect estuarine microbial population dynamics. Further work on remote sensing strategies to track Vibrio populations will involve students working with fellow UNH faculty and local businesses with expertise in this area. We will be applying new pathogenic strain detection assays to track Vibrio parahaemolyticus populations in estuarine ecosystem matrices throughout the warmer months of 2015.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Shellfish harvesting and public health are being threatened by the emerging incidence of vibirosis in consumers of shellfish from the Northeastern U.S. Where more northerly states with colder coastal ecosystems had rare disease occurrence in the past, recent increases in incidence has triggered costly harvest management and monitoring needs for industry and public health agencies alike. The research to date has continued to result in significant changes in our knowledge about the dynamics of Vibrios in shellfish in Northeast US estuarine ecosystems. Conditions, as in sea surface temperatures, in regional larger coastal ecosystems like the Gulf of Maine and Long Island Sound also appear to influence Vibrio species populations in estuarine ecosystems. Our recent surveillance of Vibrio concentrations in water, shellfish and sediments now suggests that association with plankton is a significant ecosystem factor that affects Vibrio populations, and that remote sensing may aid our need to track and predict risk conditions. We have also continued to provide much needed knowledge about the emergence of pathogenic strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in the Northeast as a result of our collaborations with state public health and resource agencies. Working in collaboration with Dr. Cheryl Whistler's laboratory at UNH, we have shown that clinical Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains in MA, NH and ME were locally derived strains through 2011, and thereafter by a strain (ST36) that are derived from Pacific Northwest populations. Using a new genetic sequencing approach, we identified diagnostic genes from the ST36 type strains for use as a molecular marker amplification (PCR) assay to identify clinical strains and to aid in surveillance of these strains in coastal ecosystems. Our tiered conceptual approach for detection and enumeration of pathogenic Vibrio species in coastal ecosystems has been further optimized based on new findings. Over the past year we have expanded our routine surveillance at a new site and included plankton as an added ecosystem matrix for tracking Vibrio population dynamics. PhD and undergraduate students have worked with plankton ecologists to develop novel ways of sampling for and separating zooplankton from phytoplankton in estuaries, and have teamed with students and a professor from a local technical college to determine photosynthetic pigments present in the phytoplankton and water samples. Our efforts were further modified to include more frequent (biweekly) sampling to determine environmental variability in Vibrio and plankton levels during the warmer summer months. We have also initiated collaborations with a local private company to explore remote sensing of sea surface conditions and photosynthetic pigments as possible forecasting approach to predict risk conditions across the Great Bay estuary and in larger ecosystems like the Gulf of Maine. Overall, Vibrio parahaemolyticus populations in the Great Bay estuary were present at lower levels than in 2012, and the number of Vibrio parahaemolyticus infections in the Northeast decreased, both reflecting cooler Gulf of Maine and Long Island Sound conditions. Our understanding of conditions that allow for reducing pathogenic Vibrio levels in harvested shellfish has also been enhanced through efforts lead by a PhD student, Mike Taylor. 2014 was the fourth year of monthly oyster relay experiments, where oysters were relayed from a harvest area with elevated levels of Vibrio species to one where Vibrio levels were minimal. Overall results suggest that relay is a viable strategy for post-harvest treatment to reduce Vibrio concentrations in oysters within 14 days. The underlying mechanisms for why this happens continue to be the focus of our research. Trends in Vibrio and non-Vibrio bacterial taxa in oysters during the relay process have been tracked using metagenomic analysis through the Illumina platform. The bacterial sequence data were analyzed using high throughput sequence analysis software to determine which bacteria increase when pathogenic Vibrio species decrease, and thus may be involved in competitive exclusion of pathogenic Vibrio species during the relay process. Taxa identified from this approach and those cultured from oyster and estuarine water samples collected during relay will be used in in vitro competition experiments against local Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains to select the best candidates to test for experimentally excluding pathogenic Vibrio species from harvested shellfish.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Steve Jones and others. 2014. Vibrio Outreach in The Northeast U.S.: Whos the Audience, Whats the Message, and is the Message Getting Through? Journal of Shellfish Research Vol. 33(2): 553.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Michael Taylor, Thomas Howell, Steve Jones. 2014. Pathogenic Vibrio Occurrence in Northeast US Shellfish and Strategies for their Removal. Journal of Shellfish Research Vol. 33(2): 563-4.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Feng Xu, Ashley Marcinkiewicz, Meghan Hartwick, Vaughn Cooper, Steve Jones, Cheryl Whistler. Pathogenic Vibrio parahaemolyticus Strains and Total Population Dynamics in New England Shellfish Harvest Areas. Journal of Shellfish Research Vol. 33(2): 565.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Steve Jones, Mike Taylor, Tom Howell, Meghan Hartwick, Vaughn Cooper, & Cheryl Whistler .2014. Pathogenic Vibrio Occurrence in Northeast US Shellfish and Strategies for Their Removal. P. 621. Abstracts of Technical Papers of the 106th Annual Meeting of the National Shellfisheries Association. March 29-April 2, 2014. Jacksonville, FL 2014.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Feng Xu, Ashley Marcinkiewicz, Meghan Hartwick, Vaughn Cooper, Steve Jones & Cheryl Whistler. 2014. Pathogenic Vibrio parahaemolyticus strains in New England shellfish harvest areas. P. 663. Abstracts of Technical Papers of the 106th Annual Meeting of the National Shellfisheries Association. March 29-April 2, 2014. Jacksonville, FL 2014.
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