Detection of Haplosporidium nelsoni in Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas in Japan

Abstract

One hundred spat of Crassostrea gigas obtained from a coastal area in north-eastern Japan were examined for the protistan parasite Haplosporidium nelsoni. Haplosporidium-like plasmodia were histologically observed in two spat and positively reacted with a H. nelsoni-specific probe in in situ hybridization. Four spat including the two spat in which the plasmodia were found showed positive reaction in PCR analysis for the detection of H. nelsoni.The small subunit ribosomal RNA sequence amplified from the spat was virtually identical (99.7%) to the sequence of H. nelsoni previously reported. These results demonstrate that H. nelsoni is distributed in Japan.