White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV) and Yellow-head Virus (YHV) emerged in Taiwan and Thailand and then spread to other prawn producing countries in Asia and the America’s. Biosecurity Australia manages the risks of importing from these countries through stringent testing of uncooked imported species of Penaeid prawn. Although WSSV and YHV infections are not of concern to human health, Penaeid species are highly susceptible to infection of these viruses, and the impact is high mortality and production losses. In recent years, the White Spot Syndrome Virus has been detected in a Queensland waterway and adjoining aquaculture farms.
Symbio Laboratories can assist seafood importers and Australian based aquaculture producers test for the presence of White Spot and Yellow-head virus. Rapid testing turnaround is available to meet commercial and logistics requirements.
White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV), type species of the genus Whispovirus, is a large, double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) virus that infects a broad range of decapod crustaceans.
The real-time PCR method (see left image) for WSSV employed by Symbio Laboratories facilitates high throughput analysis of samples with rapid reporting of results.
Yellow-head virus (YHV) is a pleomorphic, enveloped virus with single-stranded RNA of positive polarity, which is primarily localised in the cytoplasm of infected cells. YHV infects a broad range of Penaeid species including Penaeus monodon. Symbio Laboratories utilises the reverse transcriptase real-time PCR method for YHV, facilitating high throughput analysis of samples and sensitive detection of viral RNA.
