Microbiome implicated in sea star wasting disease

Research study shows that the animals' microbiomes the community of bacteria living in and on the sea stars are critically important to the progression of the disease. Or, it could be that the changes the scientists observed in the sea stars' microbiomes were caused by another, as yet undetected, pathogen. "We were thinking we might find a smoking gun of one microbe but no, there's a whole suite of known pathogens that increase in abundance with the onset of the disease, Pespeni said.

These known disease-causing bacteria from the family Tenacibaculum, and other opportunistic bacteria, spiked in abundance at the beginning of the time the scientists observed the sea stars getting sick. And these same troublesome bacteria continued to increase as the diseased animals progressed toward death. At the same time, known beneficial bacteria, from the group Pseudoalteromonas, greatly decreased in abundance at the onset of the illness.