• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
• /
• v.53 no.4
• /
• pp.413-419
• /
• 2015

The present study determined and compared the genetic diversity of Plasmodium falciparum strains infecting children living in 2 areas from Gabon with different malaria endemicity. Blood samples were collected from febrile children from 2008 to 2009 in 2 health centres from rural (Oyem) and urban (Owendo) areas. Genetic diversity was determined in P. falciparum isolates by analyzing the merozoite surface protein-1 (msp1) gene polymorphism using nested-PCR. Overall, 168 children with mild falciparum malaria were included. K1, Ro33, and Mad20 alleles were found in 110 (65.5%), 94 (55.9%), and 35 (20.8%) isolates, respectively, without difference according to the site (P>0.05). Allelic families' frequencies were comparable between children less than 5 years old from the 2 sites; while among the older children the proportions of Ro33 and Mad20 alleles were 1.7 to 2.0 fold higher at Oyem. Thirty-three different alleles were detected, 16 (48.5%) were common to both sites, and 10 out of the 17 specific alleles were found at Oyem. Furthermore, multiple infection carriers were frequent at Oyem (57.7% vs 42.2% at Owendo; P=0.04) where the complexity of infection was of 1.88 (${\pm}0.95$) higher compared to that found at Owendo ($1.55{\pm}0.75$). Extended genetic diversity of P. falciparum strains infecting Gabonese symptomatic children and high multiplicity of infections were observed in rural area. Alleles common to the 2 sites were frequent; the site-specific alleles predominated in the rural area. Such distribution of the alleles should be taken into accounts when designing MSP1 or MSP2 malaria vaccine.

• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
• /
• v.3 no.2
• /
• pp.133-138
• /
• 1996

Purpose : In the treatment of MRSA infection, rapid detection of MRSA is extremely important. The mecA gene codes the new drug resistant polypeptides called PBP2' which mediates the clinically relevant resistance to all beta-lactam antibiotics. The identical mecA gene has been found in coagulase-negative staphylococcus with the methicillin-resistant phenotype. On the other hand, the femA gene was absent from coagulase negative staphylococcus strains with the methicillin resistant phenotype. This study is aimed at early detection and definite diagnosis of MRSA. Methods : A total of 24 MRSA strains were studied. All strains were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility and purified DNA. We amplified both mecA and femA genes by PCR in 24 strains. Results : In MRSA all the 16 strains (100%) carried femA gene and 11 strains (68.7%) carried mecA gene. In contrast, in methicillin sensitive staphylococcus all the 8 strains (100%) carried femA and only 3 strains (37.5%) were detected mecA. Conclusions : As results, there are difference in the phenotype and genotype of methicillin resistance by PCR of mecA and femA. Such disparities between methicillin resistance and the presence of mecA gene suggest the presence of control gene of the mecA.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Service
• /
• v.33 no.1
• /
• pp.13-21
• /
• 2010

Chicken anemia virus (CAV) has been recognized as an immunosuppressive agent and plays role as an etiological agent of multifactorial diseases in chicken. In this study, we investigated distribution of CAV antibody by ELISA and the virus gene by PCR in poultry farms in Jeongeup, Jeonbuk province. In the test using ELISA kit, 41 (95.3%) of 43 flocks and 88.6% of the individual chickens were positive, respectively. By PCR, 90.9% of the broiler breeders and 75.0% of White-semi breeders were found positive, respectively. All hatchery was negative by PCR. Of the clinical cases from 49 poultry flocks, 87.5% of flocks and 54.7% for each samples were found positive by ELISA, respectively. By PCR test, 21 (42.9%) of 49 flocks were positive. Major clinical signs of the infected flocks were growth retardation, femoral subcutaneous bleeding, depression, limping, and continuing selection. The genetic analysis of separate N genes of CAV showed highly homologous each other. The nucleotide sequence of field isolates had homology ranged from 99.9% to 97.5% with Chinese strains, and 99.9% to 99.6% with Japanese strain. Phylogenetic analysis based on the N gene of CAV isolates showed the closely relation with Chinese strains. The results of this survey could be used as basic data for development of vaccine.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.32 no.9
• /
• pp.1120-1125
• /
• 2022

Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), the causative agent of Japanese encephalitis (JE), is an importantly zoonotic, vector-borne virus widely prevalent in Asia. Although JE has been well controlled in China, its prevalence remains a huge threat to the pig industry as well as human health. Herein, we report on our molecular and serological investigations of JEV among pigs from different regions in Hunan Province of China from 2019 to 2021. Collectively, 19.27% (583/3026, 95% Confidential Interval (CI) 17.86-20.68) of sampled pigs were positive for JEV IgG antibody as revealed by indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and the seroprevalence of JEV among pigs was significantly associated with the development stage and breeding scale (p < 0.01). Meanwhile, 10.99% (42/382, 95% CI 7.86-14.13) of tissue samples of pigs with suspected clinical symptoms of JE and 23.44% (15/64, 95% CI 13.06-33.82) of mosquito batches were JEV-positive via reverse polymerase chain reaction. In addition, the complete E gene sequences of 14 JEV strains identified in this study were amplified and sequenced. Phylogenetic analysis showed that all 14 JEV strains belonged to genotype I-b and displayed a distinct genetic relationship to the present JEV vaccine strain (SA14-14-2). In conclusion, our results revealed not only the severe prevalence of JEV in Hunan Province, but also that JEV I-b might be the predominant genotype in Hunan Province, suggesting therefore that effective measures for JE control are urgently needed.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
• /
• v.57 no.4
• /
• pp.10.1-10.7
• /
• 2015

Control and prevention of foot and mouth disease (FMD) by vaccination remains unsatisfactory in endemic countries. Indeed, consistent and new FMD epidemics in previously disease-free countries have precipitated the need for a worldwide control strategy. Outbreaks in vaccinated animals require that a new and safe vaccine be developed against foot and mouth virus (FMDV). FMDV can be eradicated worldwide based on previous scientific information about its spread using existing and modern control strategies.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
• /
• v.45 no.2
• /
• pp.199-205
• /
• 2005

DNA fingerprint patterns of 8 Brucella reference strains and 15 B. abortus field isolates were characterized by repetitive element sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) using BOX- and ERIC-primers in this study. AMOS PCR differentiated all Brucella field isolates from B. abortus RB51, a vaccine strain by producing a B. abortus-specific 498 bp band. Rep-PCR using BOX-primer produced 13 to 18 bands with sizes of between 230 and 3,300 bp, and discriminated Brucella strains to the species level except B. canis and B. suis. PCR products amplified with ERIC primers were, however, not appropriate for differentiating the Brucella isolates. DNA fingerprint patterns for all B. abortus field isolates were identical among them and were put on one cluster with B. abortus biovar 1 reference strain in the dendrogram, indicating they were highly clonal. These results suggested that rep-PCR using BOX primer might to be a useful tool for calculating genetic relatedness among the Brucella species and for the study of brucellosis epidemiology.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.161-170
• /
• 1993

Prospects are briefly reviewed for further advances in current poultry industry technology in the foreseeable future. It is concluded that in the most advanced industries progress should continue at a similar rate to the recent past in conventional genetics and breeding, nutrition and disease control. Significant benefits will also follow in the short-term from the application of molecular biotechnology to disease diagnosis and vaccine production. Technical advances now make it possible to produce transgenic chickens at acceptable success rates but applications of this technology to poultry breeding will not become significant till we have sufficient knowledge of the poultry genome, and especially the genes involved in production performance. For the undeveloped and less advanced industries it is argued that the level of advanced technologies to be implemented in those countries should be decided largely on market forces, informed by objective assessment of the diverse options available. The need for urgent international action on conservation of poultry genetic resources is also stressed.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.45-52
• /
• 2012

T cells induce immune responses and thereby eliminate infected micro-organisms when peptides from the microbial proteins are bound to HLAs in the host cell surfaces, It is known that the more stable the binding of peptide to HLA is, the stronger the T cell response gets to remove more effectively the source of infection. Accordingly, if peptides (HLA binder) which can be bound stably to a certain HLA are found, those peptieds are utilized to the development of peptide vaccine to prevent infectious diseases or even to cancer. However, HLA is highly polymorphic so that HLA has a large number of alleles with some frequencies even in one population. Therefore, it is very inefficient to find the peptides stably bound to a number of HLAs by testing random possible peptides for all the various alleles frequent in the population. In order to solve this problem, computational methods have recently been developed to predict peptides which are stably bound to a certain HLA. These methods could markedly decrease the number of candidate peptides to be examined by biological experiments. Accordingly, this paper not only introduces a method of machine learning to predict peptides binding to an HLA, but also suggests a new prediction model so called 'knowledge-based genetic algorithm' that has never been tried for HLA binding peptide prediction. Although based on genetic algorithm (GA). it showed more enhanced performance than GA by incorporating expert knowledge in the process of the algorithm. Furthermore, it could extract rules predicting the binding peptide of the HLA alleles common in Koreans.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.28 no.1
• /
• pp.122-135
• /
• 2018

Listeriolysin O (LLO), one of the most immunogenic proteins of Listeria monocytogenes and its main virulence factor, mediates bacterial escape from the phagosome of the infected cell. Thus, its expression in a nonpathogenic bacterial host may enable effective delivery of heterologous antigens to the host cell cytosol and lead to their processing predominantly through the cytosolic MHC class I presentation pathway. The aim of this project was to characterize the delivery of a model antigen, chicken egg ovalbumin (OVA), to the cytosol of dendritic cells by recombinant Bacillus subtilis vegetative cells expressing LLO. Our work indicated that LLO produced by non-sporulating vegetative bacteria was able to support OVA epitope presentation by MHC I molecules on the surface of antigen presenting cells and consequently influence OVA-specific cytotoxic T cell activation. Additionally, it was proven that the genetic context of the epitope sequence is of great importance, as only the native full-sequence OVA fused to the N-terminal fragment of LLO was sufficient for effective epitope delivery and activation of $CD8^+$ lymphocytes. These results demonstrate the necessity for further verification of the fusion antigen potency of enhancing the MHC I presentation, and they prove that LLO-producing B. subtilis may represent a novel and attractive candidate for a vaccine vector.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
• /
• v.43 no.1
• /
• pp.7-13
• /
• 2007

Pasteurella multocida is one of the important animal pathogen causing widespread infections in various domestic animals. In swine, it causes severe respiratory diseases such as atrophic rhinitis and pneumonic pasteurellosis. To develop the efficient subunit vaccine against swine atrophic rhinitis, we investigated protective antibodies and humoral immunity of outer membrane protein H (OmpH) which is one of the major outer membrane proteins in P. multocida. Outer membrane fraction of P. multocida was immunologically detectable using antisera from both mice groups vaccinated by formalin-killed whole cells and by commercial vaccine. The expression vector for production of recombinant OmpH was constructed and the recombinant OmpH was expressed and purified from E. coli. Recombinant OmpH showed high antigenic and immunogenic properties in mice vaccination and ELISA with antisera.