38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology

The last twenty years have seen the emergence of several new crustacean viruses. Some of these have had relatively little impact, while others, such as white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) and Taura syndrome virus, grew very quickly into global epidemics with high mortality and serious economic losses. This review will focus on WSSV, which is the causative agent of white spot disease (WSD). WSSV is a large (~300 kbp) dsDNA virus that first appeared in 1992 in Fu-Jian province, China. Initially classified as a baculovirus, in 2002 WSSV was erected as the type species of a new genus, Whispovirus, in the new family Nimaviridae. The uniqueness of WSSV means that other viral infection models often cannot be applied, and the functional genomics of the virus need to be studied ab initio. Nevertheless, since its devastating emergence, the development of reliable, easy-to-use diagnostic tools and our increased knowledge of the disease and the virus have led to improved culturing and monitoring techniques and enabled other anti-disease measures such as stricter quarantine controls. Strategies that currently being explored include the development of disease resistant strains, shrimp lines that are specific pathogen free, and gene targeting. Recent vaccination studies have also suggested that the crustacean defense system may possess pathogen-specific memory.