Project description:Salmonella being one of the major infectious diseases in poultry causes considerable economical losses in terms of mortality and morbidity especially in countries which lack effective vaccination programs. Salmonellosis is considered to be most important zoonotic disease which causes considerable foodborne illness that leads to enormous economic loses. To minimize such losses, enhancing disease resistance to different pathogens seems to be a promising strategy. The indigenous chicken, evolved through thousands of years of natural selection, are well adapted to the local climatic conditions with better resistance to diseases. In the present study we investigated liver and spleen transcriptome profile of indigenous (Kashmir faverolla) breed and commercial broiler poultry at day 5 post-inoculation with Salmonella typhimurium using RNA sequencing. The DEGs and pathways identified shall provide potential targets to enhance disease resistance in poultry through successful breeding programmes.
Project description:Acinetobacter baumannii is currently a major threat to human health. With the spread of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strains, the development of complementary strategies is needed. A promising complimentary and realistic strategy could be phage therapy, which uses bacteriophages (phages), i.e viruses that specifically infect and kill bacterial cells during their life cycle. We designed a two-phage cocktail highly efficient against an extensive drug-resistant (XDR) A. baumannii isolate collected from a patient with burn wound infection at CHUV (termed Ab125). A first in vitro screen of our collection of 34 different phages identified only phage vB_AbaM_3098 as capable of lysing Ab125. However, quick selection of phage-resistant clones (termed Ab139) occurred. Comparative genomics and proteomics between Ab125 and Ab139 revealed several key variations. Very interestingly, we observed that Ab139 became susceptible to six different phages in the collection, otherwise inactive on Ab125. Phage-resistance was also selected when Ab139 was challenged with either of the six phages, with bacterial regrowth observed between 14 h and 16 h. However, combination of vB_AbaM_3098 and vB_AbaM_3014 led to a two-phage cocktail capable of totally inhibiting the growth of Ab125. Treatment with the phage cocktail led to 90% survival after 5 days in the in vivo Galleria Mellonella model of infectious diseases, compared to 0% in the non-treated group. We show that the combination of a phage that only slightly shifted the in vitro bacterial growth curve with an “inactive phage” led to the formulation of a highly bactericidal phage cocktail against Ab125. We then tested the therapeutic potential of the assembled cocktail in synergy with antibiotics and found a synergy with colistin. This work highlights the complexity sometimes involved in the assembly of potent phage cocktail.
Project description:The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of high levels of Tenebrio molitor dietary inclusion (15%) on molecular mechanisms that influence poultry health in a broiler chicken diet.