Project description:Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae is the etiologic agent of contagious pleuropneumonia, an economically important disease of commercially reared swine throughout the world. To cause this disease, A. pleuropneumoniae must rapidly overcome porcine pulmonary innate immune defenses. Effects of koromycin, an antimicrobial agent that acts as an noncompetitive inhibitor of the interaction of NQR with its quinone substrate, on the transcriptome of A. pleuropneumoniae was investigated.
Project description:Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae is the etiologic agent of contagious pleuropneumonia, an economically important disease of commercially reared swine throughout the world. To cause this disease, A. pleuropneumoniae must rapidly overcome porcine pulmonary innate immune defenses. Since bronchoalveolar fluid (BALF) contains many of the innate immune components found in the lung, we examined the gene expression of a virulent serovar 1 strain of A. pleuropneumoniae after exposure to concentrated BALF. This experiment was also carried out with a malT mutant of the same strain.
Project description:Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, the causative agent of porcine pleuropneumonia, is a highly contagious respiratory pathogen that causes severe losses to the swine industry worldwide. Current commercially-available vaccines are of limited value because they do not induce cross-serovar immunity and do not prevent development of the carrier state. Microarray-based comparative genomic hybridizations (M-CGH) were used to estimate whole genomic diversity of representative Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae strains. Our goal was to identify conserved genes, especially those predicted to encode outer membrane proteins and lipoproteins because of their potential for the development of more effective vaccines. Using hierarchical clustering, our M-CGH results showed that the majority of the genes in the genome of the serovar 5 A. pleuropneumoniae L20 strain were conserved in the reference strains of all 15 serovars and in representative field isolates. Fifty-eight conserved genes predicted to encode for outer membrane proteins or lipoproteins were identified. As well, there were several clusters of diverged or absent genes including those associated with capsule biosynthesis, toxin production as well as genes typically associated with mobile elements. Keywords: Comparative Genomic Hybridization
