Amplification of a Piscirickettsia salmonis-like 16S rDNA product from bacterioplankton DNA collected from the coastal waters of Oregon, USA

Piscirickettsiosis is a disease observed in salmonids reared in net-pens in the North and South Pacific and in the North Atlantic oceans. Piscirickett sia. salmonis, the etiologic agent of piscirickettsiosis, is a gram-negativ e, obligate, intracellular pathogen that replicates within cytoplasmic vacu oles. We describe here the detection, by dot-blot hybridization, polymerase chain reaction, and sequence analysis, of a 16S rDNA sequence that is 99.5 -98.2% similar to the 16S rDNA sequences of known isolates of P. salmonis.