Phage therapy of coral disease

At present there are no known procedures for preventing or treating infectious diseases of corals. Toward this end, the use of phage therapy has been investigated. Lytic bacteriophages (phages) were isolated for two bacterial pathogens that are responsible for coral diseases, Vibrio coralliilyticus, which is the causative agent of bleaching and tissue lysis of Pocillopora damicornis, and Thalosomonas loyaeana, which causes the white plague-like disease of Favia favus. By using these phages in controlled aquaria experiments, it was demonstrated that each of these diseases could be controlled by the pathogen-specific phage. The data indicate that initially the phages bind to the pathogen in seawater and are then brought to the coral surface where they multiply and lyse the pathogen. The phages remained associated with the coral and could prevent subsequent infections. These data suggest that phage therapy has the potential to control the spread of infectious coral diseases.