Project description:Bacterial infections remain an important cause of morbidity in poultry production. The molecular characteristics and dynamic changes in immune cell populations after bacterial infection have yet to be fully understood. Beijing-You chicken and Cobb broiler, two broiler breeds with different disease resistance, were infected with Salmonella typhimurium, and inflammation models were constructed. We characterized chicken spleen CD45+ immune cells by single-cell RNA sequencing.
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:Humans and animals encounter a summation of exposures during their lifetime (the exposome). In recent years, the scope of the exposome has begun to include microplastics. Microplastics (MPs) have increasingly been found in locations where there could be an interaction with Salmonella enterica Typhimurium, one of the commonly isolated serovars from processed chicken. In this study, the microbiota response to a 24-hour co-exposure to Salmonella enterica Typhimurium and/or low-density polyethylene (PE) microplastics in an in vitro broiler cecal model was determined using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing (Illumina) and untargeted metabolomics. Community sequencing results indicated that PE fiber with and without S. Typhimurium yielded a lower Firmicutes/Bacteroides ratio compared to other treatment groups, which is associated with poor gut health, and overall had greater changes to the cecal microbial community composition. However, changes in the total metabolome were primarily driven by the presence of S. Typhimurium. Additionally, the co-exposure to PE Fiber and S. Typhimurium caused greater cecal microbial community and metabolome changes than either exposure alone. Our results indicate that polymer shape is an important factor in effects resulting from exposure. It also demonstrates that microplastic-pathogen interactions cause metabolic alterations to the chicken cecal microbiome in an in vitro chicken cecal model.
Project description:Salmonella Heidelberg is currently the 9th common serovar and has more than twice the average incidence of blood infections in Salmonella. A recent Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak in chicken infected 634 people during 2013-2014, with a hospitalization rate of 38% and an invasive illness rate of 15%. While the company’s history suggested longstanding sanitation issues, the strains’ characteristics which may have contributed to the outbreak are unknown. We hypothesized that the outbreak strains of S. Heidelberg might possess enhanced stress tolerance or virulence capabilities. Consequently, we obtained nine food isolates collected during the outbreak investigation and several reference isolates and tested their tolerance to processing stresses, their ability to form biofilms, and their invasiveness in vitro. We further performed RNA-sequencing on three isolates with varying heat tolerance to determine the mechanism behind our isolates’ enhanced heat tolerance. Ultimately, we determined that (i) many Salmonella Heidelberg isolates associated with a foodborne outbreak have enhanced heat resistance (ii) Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak isolates have enhanced biofilm-forming ability under stressful conditions, compared to the reference strain (iii) exposure to heat stress may also increase Salmonella Heidelberg isolates’ antibiotic resistance and virulence capabilities and (iv) Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak-associated isolates are primed to better survive stress and cause illness. This data helps explain the severity and scope of the outbreak these isolates are associated with and can be used to inform regulatory decisions on Salmonella in poultry and to develop assays to screen isolates for stress tolerance and likelihood of causing severe illness.
Project description:Optimization of broiler chicken breast muscle protein accretion is key for the efficient production of poultry meat, whose demand is steadily increasing. In a context where antimicrobial growth promoters use is being restricted, it is important to find alternatives as well as to characterize the effect of immunological stress on broiler chicken growth. Despite of its importance, research on broiler chicken muscle protein dynamics has been mostly limited to the study of mixed protein turnover. The present study aims to characterize the effect of a bacterial challenge and the feed supplementation of a citrus and a cucumber extract on broiler chicken individual breast muscle proteins fractional synthesis rates (FSR) using a recently developed dynamic proteomics pipeline. 21 day-old broiler chickens were administered a single 2H2O dose before being culled at different timepoints. A total of 60 breast muscle protein extracts from five experimental groups (Unchallenged, Challenged, Control Diet, Diet 1 and Diet 2) were analyzed using a DDA proteomics approach. Proteomics data was filtered in order to reliably calculate multiple proteins FSR making use of a newly developed bioinformatics pipeline. Broiler breast muscle proteins FSR uniformly decreased following a bacterial challenge, this change was judged significant for 15 individual proteins, the two major functional clusters identified as well as for mixed breast muscle protein. Citrus or cucumber extract feed supplementation did not show any effect on the breast muscle protein FSR of immunologically challenged broilers. The present study has identified potential predictive markers of breast muscle growth and provided new information on broiler chicken breast muscle protein turnover which could be essential for improving the efficiency of broiler chicken meat production.
Project description:The expression of genes were analysed in 7th day of embryonic stage between Aseel, an indigenous slow-growing chicken, and control broiler, a fast-growing broiler chicken line. The whole embryo was collected in TRIZOL and total RNA was isolated. The expression profile of gene was determined in 64k Agilent chicken microarray chip. The Cy3 dye was used for detection. The fold change of expression was analysed in Aseel as compared to broiler chicken line.
Project description:The expression of genes were analysed in muscle of 18th day of embryonic stage between Aseel, an indigenous slow-growing chicken, and control broiler, a fast-growing broiler chicken line. The whole embryo was collected in TRIZOL and total RNA was isolated. The expression profile of gene was determined in 64k Agilent chicken microarray chip. The Cy3 dye was used for detection. The fold change of expression was analysed in Aseel as compared to broiler chicken line.
Project description:Salmonella enterica is one of the most important foodborne pathogens that infect a variety of animals and birds. In humans, S. Typhimurium causes gastroenteritis, leading to vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps. We mainly get infected with Salmonella by ingesting comminated poultry products. Therefore, developing an oral live attenuated vaccine for the poultry industry is our best bet against Salmonella infection. In this article, we investigated the potential of the next generation of Salmonella vaccines. We generated a library of potentially attenuated S. Typhimurium mutants and compared fitness to that of a commercial vaccine. We also investigated the invasion and survival potential of these mutants in chicken macrophages. Our data indicate that although these mutants had no significant growth defects, they were much sensitive to macrophage attack. Analyzing the transcriptome data from infected primary chicken macrophages, we concluded that these mutants elicit a robust immune response by activating several immunoregulatory pathways. Our data also indicates that by combining phoPQ deletion with an already existing cya-crp deletion in MeganVac1, a much stronger immune response can be generated.
Project description:We report the genome-wide DNA methylation mapping of chicken by methylated DNA immunoprecipitation following by highthroughput sequencing, and the gene expression profile of chicken by RNA-seq. For meDIP-seq, about 17,202,074 to 27,501,760 reads were generated for the tissue and liver tissues of the red jungle fowl and the avian broiler each. We found that compared with the red jungle fowl, DNA methylation in muscle tissue of the avian broiler, showed dramatically decline on a genome-wide scale. Furthermore, the length of the highly methylated regions (HMRs) has become shorter in the avian broiler, which has suffered intense artificial selection. In addition to the global changes in DNA methylation, transcriptome-wide analysis of the two breeds of chicken revealed that the patterns of gene expression in the domestic chicken have undergone a specific bias towards a pattern that is more suited to human-made environments with variable expression in certain gene functions, such as immune response and fatty acid metabolism. Our results demonstrated a potential role of epigenetic modification in animal domestication besides the genetic variations. Examination of whole genome DNA methylation status in liver and muscle of two chicken breeds.