Investigation of Systemic Granulomatosis in cultured meagre, Argyrosomus regius using clinical metagenomics

The aim of this study was to use metagenomic Next Generation Sequencing directly in DNA extracted from kidney samples of meagre at three health states (a) healthy with no visible granulomas, (b) SG-affected and (c) kidneys with calcification, in order to investigate for the presence of pathogens known to cause granulomas and to compare the microbiome in these three states. To our knowledge, this is the first clinical application of mNGS in fish lesions as a tool for disease diagnosis in aquaculture.