Epidemiology of betanodavirus infection in captured fish in blacksea

Viral Nervous Necrosis (VNN) is an important viral disease causes great losses with epidemics in the world. There is no VNN study on wildlife in the Black Sea in Turkey. For this reason; This study was conducted for VNN viral nucleic acid in 8 fish species naturally caught in 6 provinces in the Central and Eastern Black Sea Region. A total of 1265 fish samples were collected from naturally caught horse mackerel, red mullet, haddock, garfish, anchovy, sea bass, trout and mullet from the provinces of Sinop, Samsun, Ordu, Giresun, Trabzon and Rize. The collected fish samples were grouped as 5 fish samples in each pool. Suspensions were prepared from brain and eye tissues of fish, known to have tropism of the virus. Tissue samples obtained from the collected fish were investigated for viral nucleic acid by real-time reverse transcriptase PCR (rtRT-PCR) method. As a result of the molecular scanning, one sample from the red mullet fish species pools from Samsun province was found positive for VNNV nucleic acid. As a result of the sequence analysis, it was determined that the virus found belongs to the RGNNV genotype, which is endemic in the Mediterranean. As a result of this thesis, Betanodavirus was detected for the first time in wild life in Turkey.