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. 2022 Feb 28;11(3):303.
doi: 10.3390/pathogens11030303.

Morphological and Molecular Characterization of a New Myxozoan, Myxobolus grassi sp. nov. (Myxosporea), Infecting the Grass Carp, Ctenopharyngodon idella in the Gomti River, India

Naireen Fariya  1 , Harpreet Kaur  2 , Mahender Singh  3 , Rehana Abidi  1 , Mansour El-Matbouli  4 , Gokhlesh Kumar  4
Affiliations

Morphological and Molecular Characterization of a New Myxozoan, Myxobolus grassi sp. nov. (Myxosporea), Infecting the Grass Carp, Ctenopharyngodon idella in the Gomti River, India

Naireen Fariya et al. Pathogens. .

Abstract

Myxosporeans are well-known parasites infecting food fishes in fresh and marine water around the globe. Grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella), a freshwater food fish commonly cultured in India with has significant economic importance. Herein, the study focuses on the description of a new myxosporean species, Myxobolus grassi sp. nov. from the gills as primary site and liver as secondary site of infection in grass carp. Both organs (gill and liver) were infected concurrently in the host and the prevalence of grass carp infection was 4.05% in gill filaments and liver, respectively. Identification of species was based on the morphological and morphometric features of the myxospore as well as 18S rDNA sequence data. A smear from gill and liver exhibited hundreds of morphologically similar myxospores. BLAST search revealed 98% sequence similarity and 0.03 genetic distance with M. catlae (KM029967) infecting gill lamellae of mrigal carp (Cirrhinus cirrhosus) from India and 98-84% sequence similarity with other myxobolids in India, China, Japan, Malaysia, Turkey and Hungary. Phylogenetically, it clustered with other myxobolids infecting gills and related organs (i.e., vital organ) of Indian cyprinid carp species. On the basis of myxospore morphology and 18S sequence, we propose M. grassi sp. nov.

Keywords: Myxobolus grassi; grass carp; myxozoan; new myxozoan species.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(i) Fresh myxospores of M. grassi sp. nov. from grass carp under phase contrast microscope. (a) Gill filament (b) liver (arrow); (ii) stained myxospores of M. grassi sp. nov. from the gill filament of grass carp. (c) giemsa stain (d) silver-nitrate stain.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Camera Lucida drawings of the mature myxospore of M. grassi sp. nov. from the gill filaments of grass carp showing (a) frontal and (b) sutural view.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Phylogenetic tree constructed by maximum likelihood displaying M. grassi sp. nov. (KP268649) from C. idella clustering next to the Indian group of myxosporean. GenBank accession numbers are given before the species and numbers on the nodes represents the bootstrap confidence values.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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