Pathogen identification and epidemic factor analysis of yellow catfish, Pelteobagrus fulvidraco, red lower jaw disease

Since 2020, another type of epidemic disease, ‘red lower jaw disease’ (RLJD), has broken out in yellow catfish Pelteobagrus fulvidraco every spring in China, causing large-scale deaths and significant economic losses. This new disease has the characteristics of strong infectivity, high mortality and a single host. To prevent and control RLJD, epidemiological investigation, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), virome sequencing, Koch's rule verification and epidemic factor investigation were studied in this article. The clinical symptoms of diseased yellow catfish were pale gill filaments, hyperaemia and swelling of the spleen and kidney. TEM results revealed that a large number of 35–40 nm spherical virus particles without envelope structure were found in the cytoplasm of spleen cells. The liver, spleen and kidney of the diseased fish had serious lesions. After virome sequencing, the calicivirus reads in the unique virus reads accounted for 99.5% of the unique virus reads in the diseased fish, which provided a relevant reference value for identifying the pathogen of RLJD. The full-length sequence of yellow catfish calicivirus (YCCV) obtained at 7405 bp, including the RNA-helicase domain, RdRp-1 domain and d1iqqa domain. At the same time, both PCR and TaqMan fluorescence quantitative PCR detection method of YCCV were established. Through the artificial infection test, YCCV was verified as the pathogen for RLJD. It was also found that YCCV mainly harmed the fish within 1 year, whereas the fish above 2 years had good resistance. The water temperature of the RLJD outbreak was mainly concentrated at 18 °C–24 °C. In the current study, after YCCV was verified as the pathogen of RLJD, epidemic factors including fish age and water temperature were studied, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time to provide a relevant theoretical basis for the pathogenic mechanism and prevention and control measures of yellow catfish RLJD. •The pathogen of Pelteobagrus fulvidraco red lower jaw disease is yellow catfish calicivirus.•The calicivirus can cause typical clinical symptoms and serious tissue lesions.•P. fulvidraco is the unique host of yellow catfish calicivirus.•The infection of calicivirus is influenced by yellow catfish age and water temperature.