Yersinia pestis: examining wildlife plague surveillance in China and the USA

Plague is a zoonotic disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis Lehmann and Neumann,1896.Although it is essentially a disease of rodents,plague can also be transmitted to people.Historically,plague has caused mas-sive morbidity and mortality events in human populations,and has recently been classified as a reemerging dis-ease in many parts of the world.This public health threat has led many countries to set up wild and domestic an-imal surveillance programs in an attempt to monitor plague activity that could potentially spill over into human populations.Both China and the USA have plague surveillance programs in place,but the disease dynamics dif-fer in each country.We present data on plague seroprevalence in wildlife and review different approaches for plague surveillance in the 2 countries.The need to better comprehend plague dynamics,combined with the fact that there are still several thousand human plague cases per year,make well-designed wildlife surveillance pro-grams a critical part of both understanding plague risks to humans and preventing disease outbreaks in the future.

How does the brown mussel Perna perna respond to environmental pollution?A review on pollution biomarkers

The brown mussel Perna perna(Linnaeus,1758)is a valuable resource for aquaculture in tropical and subtropical coastal regions.It presents desirable characteristics for biomonitoring,including being sessile,widely distributed and abundant,and is a filter-feeder able to accumulate several classes of pollutants(e.g.,metals,hydrocarbons,among others).Mussels’biological responses to pollution exposure can be measured as biomarkers,which include alterations ranging from molecular to physiological levels,to estimate the degree of environmental contamination and its effects on biota.This full review compiles two decades(2000–2020)of literature concerning biological effects on P.perna mussel caused by environmental pollutants(i.e.,metals,hydrocarbons,and emerging pollutants),considering environmental and farm-based biomonitoring.Biochemical markers related to mussels’oxidative status were efficient for the biomonitoring of metals(i.e.,antioxidant enzymes associated with oxidative damage in biomolecules).Genotoxicity and cytotoxicity indicators(i.e.,comet,micronucleus,and neutral red assays)provided a depiction of hydrocarbon contamination.The neutral red assay gave a time-concentration cytotoxic response to a wide range of pollutants,including emerging pollutants(e.g.,pharmaceuticals and biocides)and hydrocarbons.Perna perna hemocyte parameters provided a useful approach for biocide biomonitoring.This paper summarizes useful biomarkers from molecular to physiological levels in this mussel species used to identify and quantify the degree of coastal pollution.An integrated biomarker analysis may provide a way to overcome possible biomarker variations and assess multi-polluted sites.Nevertheless,it is necessary to investigate biomarker variations according to natural factors(e.g.,season and gonad maturation stage)to standardize them for trustworthy biomonitoring.