Abstract
Lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus), a North Atlantic “cleaner“ fish, is utilized to biocontrol salmon louse (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) farms. Lumpfish require excellent vision to scan for and eat louse on salmon skin. The lumpfish eye immune response to infectious diseases has not been explored. We examined the ocular response to a natural parasite infection in wild lumpfish and to an experimental bacterial infection in cultured lumpfish. Cysts associated with natural myxozoan infection in the ocular scleral cartilage of wild adult lumpfish harbored cells expressing cluster of differentiation 10 (CD10) and immunoglobulin M (IgM). Experimental Vibrio anguillarum infection, which led to exophthalmos and disorganization of the retinal tissues was associated with disruption of normal CD10 expression, CD10+ cellular infiltration and IgM expression. We further describe the lumpfish CD10 orthologue and characterize the lumpfish scleral skeleton in the context of myxozoan scleral cysts. We propose that lumpfish develop an intraocular response to pathogens, exemplified herein by myxozoan and V. anguillarum infection involving novel CD10+ cells and IgM+ cells to contain and mitigate damage to eye structures. This work is the first demonstration of CD10 and IgM expressing cells in a novel ocular immune system component in response to disease in a teleost.
Highlights
The aquaculture and utilization of lumpfish as cleaner fish to control sea-lice infestation in the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) industry has become commercially relevant in the last 10 years [1,2,3,4,5], making the study and protection of this species increasingly important
We did not observe scleral cartilage cysts in any of 4 wild lumpfish specimens of comparable size that were domesticated in the Joe Brown Aquatic Research Building (JBARB) lumpfish culture facility for 4 years
Since cluster of differentiation 10 (CD10) is known as a marker for hematopoiesis progenitor and stem cells [44, 51], the presence of CD10 cells in ocular tissue raises the possibility that wild lumpfish might utilize a form of ocular extramedullary hematopoiesis, which has been described in mammals [52, 53] for specific adaptations such as during response to ocular infection by pathogens
Summary
The aquaculture and utilization of lumpfish as cleaner fish to control sea-lice infestation in the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) industry has become commercially relevant in the last 10 years [1,2,3,4,5], making the study and protection of this species increasingly important. CD10 and IgM in Lumpfish Eye. The literature on disease causing infection in lumpfish has been growing over the past decade [10,11,12], indicating the significant environmental threats that lumpfish encounter in the wild. New knowledge of inherent features that participate in response to exogenous threats to the eyes of lumpfish is required to better understand their survival in the wild and/or use as a cleaner fish. The range in habitat across depths containing large variations in light levels, temperature and hydrostatic pressure might have forced evolution of novel morphological changes, ostensibly offering survival advantages to this species
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