Oral immunization with recombinant protein antigen expressed in tobacco against fish nervous necrosis virus.

ABSTRACT: Nervous necrosis virus (NNV), also known as betanodavirus, has been recently implicated in mass mortalities of cultured marine fish. An effective vaccine is urgently needed to protect fish against this virus. However, parenteral immunization methods are very stressful. Individual immunization for thousands of fish is very labor intensive and expensive. Therefore, we expressed NNV coat protein in tobacco chloroplasts and used it as an oral vaccine to induce immunities in fish followed by challenges with NNV. Our results revealed that mice (IgG and IgA) and fish (IgM) immunized with the oral vaccine developed significantly higher antibody titers against the NNV coat protein. Fish were partially protected against viral challenge. Taken together, our results demonstrated that a plant-based vac

SUBMITTER: Cho HS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5836763 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature