38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology

The shrimp possesses an innate immunity that is composed of both humoral and cellular responses. However, little is known about this system particularly the mechanisms involved at the molecular level. Recently, we conducted an expressed sequence tags (ESTs) analysis of the kuruma shrimp, Marsupenaeus japonicus and black tiger shrimp, Penaeus monodon to discover immune-related genes. Based on these ESTs, we constructed a cDNA microarray (spotted 1,026 distinct clones) of kuruma shrimp and black tiger shrimp. In this study we analysed the gene expression profile of the immune response of black tiger shrimp orally fed with antibiotics oxytetracycline (OTC) or oxolinic acid (OA), and artificial infected with white spot disease virus (WSV) or Vibrio harveyi by using microarray technique. The number of genes in the black tiger shrimp hemocytes showed changes in their expression levels after administration of OTC or OA and after aritificial infections of WSV or V. harveyi. Most of these genes (known and unknown functions) were down-regulated by the administration of antibiotics. In the case of pathogen infection, several gene expressions were changed, i. e. expression patterns in the shrimp hemocytes were different beween bacterial and viral infection.