Camino Gestal

Spanish National Research Council | CSIC · Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas

The common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) is an excellent candidate for aquaculture diversification , due to its biological traits and high market demand. To ensure a high-quality product while maintaining welfare in captive environments, it is crucial to develop non-invasive methods for testing health biomarkers. Proteins found in skin mucus offer a n...

As with their nervous system and other physiological traits, the immune system of cephalopods, in general, and of the common octopus, Octopus vulgaris, in particular, could also present highly evolved characteristics compared to other classes of molluscs. However, to date, there is not much information about it, and studying the defense mechanisms...

This chapter describes past and present publication trends in octopus research following a systematic mapping approach. Publication rates in popular research topics such as life history and ecology are decreasing, while others are increasing and taking the spotlight. Interest in behaviour has seen a considerable uptick in recent years. Also, rapid...

Many female squids and cuttlefishes have a symbiotic reproductive organ called the accessory nidamental gland (ANG) that hosts a bacterial consortium involved with egg defense against pathogens and fouling organisms. While the ANG is found in multiple cephalopod families, little is known about the global microbial diversity of these ANG bacterial s...

Few other invertebrates captivate our attention as cephalopods do. Octopods, cuttlefish, and squids amaze with their behavior and sophisticated body plans that belong to the most intriguing among mollusks. Little is, however, known about their body plan formation and the role of Hox genes. The latter homeobox genes pattern the anterior–posterior bo...

Histopathology associated with the apicomplexan Aggregata valdessensis in the wild population of Octopus tehuelchus was studied. Moreover, to analyze the impact of the prevalence and infection intensity on the dorsal mantle length, sex, maturity stages, condition index and total hemocyte counts on wild O. tehuelchus, Generalized Linear Models (GLMs...

Synopsis Few animal groups can claim the level of wonder that cephalopods instill in the minds of researchers and the general public. Much of cephalopod biology, however, remains unexplored: the largest invertebrate brain, difficult husbandry conditions, and complex (meta-)genomes, among many other things, have hindered progress in addressing key q...

Citation: Pérez-Polo, S.; Imran, M.A.S.; Dios, S.; Pérez, J.; Barros, L.; Carrera, M.; Gestal, C. Identifying Natural Bioactive Peptides from the Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris Cuvier, 1797) Skin Mucus By-Products Using Proteogenomic Analysis. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2023, 24, 7145. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijms24087145 Academic Editor: Elena Azzini Ab...

The common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) is nowadays the most demanded cephalopod species for human consumption. This species was also postulated for aquaculture diversification to supply its increasing demand in the market worldwide, which only relies on continuously declining field captures. In addition, they serve as model species for biomedical an...

Cephalopods have been considered enigmatic animals that have attracted the attention of scientists from different areas of expertise. However, there are still many questions to elucidate the way of life of these invertebrates. The aim of this study is to construct a reference transcriptome in Octopus vulgaris early life stages to enrich existing da...

The common octopus is the most demanded cephalopod species for human consumption. Despite important advances realized recently, the main bottleneck for commercial production of the common octopus, Octopus vulgaris, is the mass mortality of paralarvae in the first 15–20 days post-hatching (dph), with the main responsible factors still unknown. Thus,...

The Apicomplexa Aggregata spp. are intracellular parasites of cephalopods that infect the intestinal tract of commercially important species such as Octopus bimaculatus, which sustains the octopus fishery in Baja California (B.C.), Mexico. In this study, Aggregata polibraxiona n. sp. was described from the cecum of O. bimaculatus collected from Bah...

Vitellogenin (Vtg), a large multidomain protein precursor of egg-yolk proteins, is used as an endocrine disruption biomarker in fish, and in the last decades, its use has been extended to invertebrates like mollusks. However, it remains unclear whether invertebrate endocrine system produces Vtg in response to estrogens, like it occurs in oviparous...

The ostreid herpes virus (OsHV-1), associated with massive mortalities in the bivalve Crassostrea gigas, was detected for the first time in the cephalopod Octopus vulgaris. Wild adult animals from a natural breeding area in Spain showed an overall prevalence of detection of 87.5% between 2010 and 2015 suggesting an environmental source of viral mat...

The phylum Apicomplexa consists largely of obligate animal parasites that include the causative agents of human diseases such as malaria. Apicomplexans have also emerged as models to study the evolution of non-photosynthetic plastids, as they contain a relict chloroplast known as the apicoplast. The apicoplast offers important clues into how apicom...

Common octopus, Octopus vulgaris, is an economically important cephalopod species. However, its rearing under captivity is currently challenged by massive mortalities previous to their juvenile stage due to nutritional and environmental factors. Dissecting the genetic basis and regulatory mechanism behind this mortality requires genomic background...

Coccidia of the genus Aggregata is the most widely distributed coccidian in cephalopods. Damages caused to the hosts include mechanical (tissue injury), biochemical (malfunction of digestive enzymes), and molecular (affects cellular immune response) effects. However, coccidiosis is not a fatal disease to the cephalopod host; it severely weakens its...

Cephalopods and their metazoan parasites have coevolved in wild fisheries for many years. In fact, helminth larvae and parasitic copepods have been recorded in cephalopods worldwide. This is not surprising considering the important role cephalopods play in the transfer of energy and contaminants in marine food webs. Nerito-oceanic ommastrephid squi...

The aim of this open access book is to facilitate the identification and description of the different organs as well as pathogens and diseases affecting the most representative species of cephalopods focussed on Sepia officinalis, Loligo vulgaris and Octopus vulgaris. These species are valuable ‘morphotype’ models and belong to the taxonomic groups...

Health of wild and reared Octopus vulgaris is threatened by the most dangerous parasite for the octopus, the protozoan coccidia Aggregata octopiana. This host-parasite relationship was studied to analyze the effect of A. octopiana on the cellular immune parameters of O. vulgaris. A. octopiana sporocysts infecting the digestive tract of octopuses we...

Background: The Apicomplexa from aquatic environments are understudied relative to their terrestrial counterparts, and the seminal work assessing the phylogenetic relations of fish-infecting lineages is mostly based on freshwater hosts. The taxonomic uncertainty of some apicomplexan groups, such as the coccidia, is high and many genera were recent...

Coccidian parasites of the genus Aggregata are known to parasitize cephalopods as definitive hosts, however one of the genus members, A. octopiana, has shown an unresolved phylogeny within the same definitive host, the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris). Our study represents a large-scale investigation aimed at characterizing morphological traits an...

The common octopus Octopus vulgaris is a highly valuable species worldwide, but to understand its population dynamics and requirements under culture conditions, it is crucial to improve our knowledge about its planktonic stages. Previous studies validating daily beak growth increments in these stages allowed age estimation and comparison of wild an...

The common octopus, Octopus vulgaris, is a good candidate for aquaculture but a sustainable production is still unviable due to an almost total mortality during the paralarvae stage. DNA methylation regulates gene expression in the eukaryotic genome, and has been shown to exhibit plasticity throughout O. vulgaris life cycle, changing profiles from...

We estimated the age in 52 wild paralarvae collected during spawning season in NW Spain, where temperature was about 14°C. We also analyzed 37 paralarvae (0 to 22 days old) reared at 14°C and 33 paralarvae reared at 21°C (0 to 30 days old) which is the optimal temperature under culture conditions. Age estimation at 21ºC matched with true age, howev...

The common octopus, Octopus vulgaris is a new candidate species for aquaculture. However, rearing of octopus paralarvae is hampered by high mortality and poor growth rates that impede its entire culture. The study of genes involved in the octopus development and immune response capability could help to understand the key of paralarvae survival and...

This paper is the result of an international initiative and is a first attempt to develop guidelines for the care and welfare of cephalopods (i.e. nautilus, cuttlefish, squid and octopus) following the inclusion of this Class of ∼700 known living invertebrate species in Directive 2010/63/EU. It aims to provide information for investigators, animal...

The work focused on ultrastructural and molecular characterization of protozoan parasites of the genus Aggregata (Apicomplexa, Aggregatidae) in specimens of the common octopus Octopus vulgaris obtained from Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas (Southern Italy, Central Mediterranean). Aggregata spp. are reported to parasitize cephalopod species and to be resp...

Cephalopods have been included in the European Directive (EU Directive 63/2010), that rules the use of animals for scientific purposes. Therefore, animals welfare and health should be assured. Considering cephalopods, only few information are available on their microbiological status, microbiological agents affecting them and the microorganism host...

Cephalopods have the most advanced circulatory and nervous system among the mollusks. Recently, they have been included in the European directive which state that suffering and pain should be minimized in cephalopods used in experimentation. The knowledge about cephalopod welfare is still limited and several gaps are yet to be filled, especially in...

Background: Octopus vulgaris is a highly valuable species of great commercial interest and excellent candidate for aquaculture diversification; however, the octopus' well-being is impaired by pathogens, of which the gastrointestinal coccidian parasite Aggregata octopiana is one of the most important. The knowledge of the molecular mechanisms of th...

This chapter reviews the welfare and diseases that have been reported since cephalopods are maintained, reared or cultured in captivity. Although cephalopod welfare is only going to be assured in terms of the European Union (EU) legislation from January 2013, it has long been enforced in other regions or countries all over the world. Pathologies re...

DNA methylation is a common regulator of gene expression and development in mammalian and other vertebrate genomes. DNA methylation has been studied so far in a few bivalve mollusk species, finding a wide spectrum of levels. We focused our study in the common octopus, Octopus vulgaris, an important organism for neuroscience, physiology and ethology...

Cephalopods have been utilised in neuroscience research for more than 100 years particularly because of their phenotypic plasticity, complex and centralised nervous system, tractability for studies of learning and cellular mechanisms of memory (e.g. long-term potentiation) and anatomical features facilitating physiological studies (e.g. squid giant...

Cephalopod mollusks are an important marine resource for fisheries, and have received marked attention for studies on organismal biology; they are also good candidates for aquaculture. Wild and reared cephalopods are affected by a wide variety of pathogens, mainly bacteria, protozoa and metazoan parasites. Cephalopods do not have acquired immunity...

The coccidia genus Aggregata is responsible for intestinal coccidiosis in wild and cultivated cephalopods. Two coccidia species, Aggregata octopiana, (infecting the common octopus Octopus vulgaris), and A. eberthi, (infecting the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis), are identified in European waters. Extensive investigation of their morphology resulted i...

In North Atlantic European waters, the nasal mite Halarachne halichoeri has been described affecting Grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) producing different levels of respiratory disease. This study provides data on the prevalence, clinical signs and produced macro-pathology of this parasite mite infecting juvenile wild Grey seals stranded in North-Wes...

A new species of dicyemid mesozoan is described from Octopus hubbsorum Berry, 1953, collected in the south of Bahia de La Paz, Baja California Sur, México. Dicyema guaycurense n. sp. is a medium-size species that reaches about 1,600 µm in length. It occurs in folds of the renal appendages. The vermiform stages are characterized as having 22 periphe...

Aggregata bathytherma sp. nov. is described from the digestive tract of Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis, a deep-sea octopus recently discovered associated with hydrothermal vents in the northeast Pacific Ocean. Oocysts typically are spherical in shape, sometimes irregular, 163 to 356 microm in length, and 219 to 313 microm in width. Each oocyst contai...

Mussels live in diverse coastal environments experience various physical, chemical and biological conditions, which they counteract with functional adjustments and heritable adaptive changes. In order to investigate possible differences in immune system capabilities, we analyzed by qPCR the expression levels of 4 immune genes (defensin, mytilin B,...

In this study, we present the characterization of a newly identified gene, MgC1q, revealed in suppression subtractive hybridization and cDNA libraries from immunostimulated mussels. Based on sequence homology, molecular architecture and domain similarity, this new C1q-domain-containing gene may be classified as a member of the C1q family and, there...

The effect of live bacteria (Micrococcus lysodeikticus and Vibrio anguillarum), and PAMPs (poly I:C, zymosan, LPS, LTA and CpG) on the production of intermediate toxic radicals (respiratory burst activity and production of nitric oxide) and mytilin B, myticin C and lysozyme gene expression was studied in vivo and in vitro. In vitro, bacteria were a...

The alternative pathway is considered to be the most ancient route for activation of the complement system. Herein, we report the characterization of C3 and factor B-like proteins in the clam Ruditapes decussatus, termed Rd-C3 and Rd-Bf-like. The Rd-C3 is a three-chain protein, similar to other protoC3 proteins, and the Rd-Bf-like is composed of tw...

Environmental chemico-physical factors, pathogens, and biological interactions constantly affect organism physiology and behavior. Invertebrates, including bivalve mollusks do not possess acquired immunity. Their defense mechanisms rely on an innate, non-adaptive immune system employing circulating cells and a large variety of molecular effectors....

Suppression-Subtractive Hybridization (SSH) was used to identify differentially expressed Ruditapes decussatus genes against the protozoan Perkinsus olseni infection. A forward and a reverse subtraction were carried out to identify up- and down-regulated genes in both haemocytes and gills of clams naturally infected with P. olseni. New genes, candi...

Small cationic antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are host defense molecules detected in virtually all groups of organisms. To investigate the immune response mechanisms of Mytilus galloprovincialis, primary and suppression subtractive hybridization libraries were prepared from hemolymph of mussels injected with heat-inactivated bacteria or poly I:C, th...

Small cationic antimicrobial peptides (AMPS) are host defense molecules detected in virtually all gropus of organisms. To investigate the immuine response mechanisms of Mytilus galloprovincialis, primary and suppresion subtractive hybridization libraries were prepared from hemolymph of mussels injected with heat-inactivated bacteria or ply l:C, the...

Suppression subtractive hybridization was used to identify differentially expressed genes in hemocytes from carpet-shell clam Ruditapes decussatus stimulated with a mixture of dead bacterial strains. Putative function could be assigned to 100 of the 253 sequenced cDNAs. Based on sequence homologies, 3.16% of the total identified genes were possibly...

Gestal, C., Guerra, A., and Pascual, S. 2007. Aggregata octopiana (Protista: Apicomplexa): a dangerous pathogen during commercial Octopus vulgaris ongrowing. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 64. The haemolymph parameters for Octopus vulgaris and the condition index at molecular level were analysed using RNA/DNA and RNA/protein ratios on animals re...

An histology and pathological survey on carpet-shell clam cultured in the south of Galicia (NW Spain) (Ruditapes decussatus) was carried out for a two years period (2000-2001). A temporal distribution of the potentially pathogenic agents were determined by histological analysis. In addition, stocks of molluscs reported to suffer mortalities during...

The Internal Transcribed Spacer 1 (ITS-1) region from Marteilia spp. parasitizing Mediterranean mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) from Italy and flat oysters (Ostrea edulis) from Greece were characterized by RFLP with endonuclease HhaI and sequenced. Profiles "O" (Marteilia refringens), previously associated with heavy mortalities, and "M" (Marte...

Haliotis tuberculata experimentally grown in Galicia (NW Spain) and originated from Ireland began to experience mortalities during the late spring of 2004. Diseased abalone presented dark foot pigmentation, loss of surface adherence and limited ability for right themselves after they were set on their backs. Histopathological analyses showed the pr...

Goussia lusca n. sp. is described from the liver of pouting Trisopterus luscus from the NE Atlantic Ocean in Ibero-Atlantic Portuguese and Spanish waters. Mature oocysts were 31.7 (28.8 to 35.4) microm in diameter. Each oocyst contained 4 ellipsoidal sporocysts arranged in an aleatory position, and measuring approximately 13.7 x 9.2 microm. Each sp...

Phenotypic scrutiny on the life cycle of Icthyodinium chabelardi (Perkinsoide chabelardi n. gen.) based on ultrastructural techniques, and molecular phylogenetic analysis of RNA gene sequences, were carried out in order to elucidate the taxonomic position of this parasite. The absence of plastid, presence of trichocysts, and chromosomes or chromati...

A new member of the parasitic phylum Haplosporidia, which was found infecting the connective tissue, gill, digestive gland, and foot muscle of Haliotis tuberculata imported from Ireland and experimentally grown in Galicia (NW Spain), is described. Scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and molecular characterization of the...

The ultrastructure of developmental stages of Goussia cruciata and the pathology they cause in the liver of Trachurus trachurus (Teleostei: Carangidae) caught off the Galician (North-West Spain) and Portuguese North Atlantic coasts are described. Each oocyst contained four ellipsoidal sporocysts, with two sporozoites. The sporocyst wall consisted o...

A new species of coccidian, Aggregata andresi, is described from the digestive tract of the flying squid Martialia hyadesi, an ommastrephid squid that lives in cold subantarctic waters in the Southwest Atlantic. Gamogonic and sporogonic stages were observed in the digestive tract of 96.5% studied hosts. Oocysts were ovoid to subspheroid in shape, 1...