biology Article Interactions between the Parasite Philasterides dicentrarchi and the Immune System of the Turbot Scophthalmus maximus.A Transcriptomic Analysis Alejandra Valle 1 , José Manuel Leiro 2 , Patricia Pereiro 3 , Antonio Figueras 3 , Beatriz Novoa 3, Ron P. H. Dirks 4 and Jesús Lamas 1,* 1 Department of Fundamental Biology, Institute of Aquaculture, Campus Vida, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain;
[email protected] 2 Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Laboratory of Parasitology, Institute of Research on Chemical and Biological Analysis, Campus Vida, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain;
[email protected] 3 Institute of Marine Research, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-CSIC, 36208 Vigo, Spain;
[email protected] (P.P.); antoniofi
[email protected] (A.F.);
[email protected] (B.N.) 4 Future Genomics Technologies, Leiden BioScience Park, 2333 BE Leiden, The Netherlands;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +34-88-181-6951; Fax: +34-88-159-6904 Received: 4 September 2020; Accepted: 14 October 2020; Published: 15 October 2020 Simple Summary: Philasterides dicentrarchi is a free-living ciliate that causes high mortality in marine cultured fish, particularly flatfish, and in fish kept in aquaria. At present, there is still no clear picture of what makes this ciliate a fish pathogen and what makes fish resistant to this ciliate. In the present study, we used transcriptomic techniques to evaluate the interactions between P. dicentrarchi and turbot leucocytes during the early stages of infection. The findings enabled us to identify some parasite genes/proteins that may be involved in virulence and host resistance, some of which may be good candidates for inclusion in fish vaccines.