Dear Colleagues

Catfish species represent one of the major aquaculture groups in the United States and several countries across the world including China, Vietnam, Nigeria, and Egypt. The catfish industry has suffered from several bacterial disease outbreaks that cause devastating economic losses. The most prevalent bacterial infections affecting farm-raised catfish are Edwardsiella ictaluri, Flavobacterium species, Aeromonas hydrophila, and Edwardsiella piscicide. The current prevention and control strategies have inherent limitations, leading to production losses. Additionally, knowledge concerning pathogenesis, genomic evolution, and host adaptive strategies of catfish bacterial pathogens are somewhat limited. There is an increasing demand for more studies aiming to investigate the pathogenesis, virulence factors, and genome sequences of catfish bacterial pathogens to make health management decisions and to develop effective preventive strategies.

In this Special Issue, we invite researchers and colleagues to submit research papers and reviews related to different aspects of the bacterial diseases of catfish. Topics of interest include but are not limited to pathogenesis, pathology (histology, immunohistochemistry, and cytochemistry), vaccine development, diagnostic procedures, epidemiology, virulence factor identification, clinical aspects, catfish immune response (including gene/protein expression), prevention, and control. This Issue will also highlight topics related to the bacterial genomics, comparative genomics, molecular genetics, and diversity of catfish bacterial diseases. Furthermore, manuscripts focusing on functional microbiome, microbiome–disease association, and synthetic and alternative treatments are encouraged.

Dr. Mark Lawrence
Dr. Hossam Abdelhamed
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pathogens is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• catfish
• pathogenesis
• virulence factors
• biosecurity
• reverse genetics
• metagenomics
• next-generation sequencing (NGS)
• RNA-seq
• bacteria vaccines
• immunostimulants