- Flacherie
Flacherie (literally: "flaccidness") is a disease of
silkworm s, caused by silkworms eating infected or contaminatedmulberry leaves. Flacherie infected silkworms look weak and can die from this disease. Silkworm larvae that are about to die from Flacherie are a dark brown.There are two (or three) kinds of flacherie: basically, infectious (viral) flacherie and noninfectious ("touffee") flacherie. Both are technically a lethal
diarrhea .Touffee flacherie is caused by
heatwave s ("touffee" means "sudden heat spell" in French).Viral flacherie is ultimately caused by infection with "Bombyx mori" infectious flacherie virus (BmIFV,
Dicistroviridae ), "Bombyx mori" densovirus (BmDNV,Parvoviridae ) or "Bombyx mori" cypovirus 1 (BmCPV-1,Reoviridae ). This either alone or in combination withbacteria l infection destroys thegut tissue. Bacterialpathogen s contributing to infectious flaccherie are "Serratia marcescens ", and species of "Streptococcus " and "Staphylococcus " in the form known as "thatte roga".In
1865 ,Louis Pasteur was the first one able to recognize that mortality due to viral flacherie was caused byinfection . He developed a method by which silkworm farmers could distinguish and discard infected eggs using alight microscope .
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