Project description:Brucellosis is an important zoonotic disease that causes great economic losses. Vaccine immunisation is the main strategy for the prevention and control of Brucellosis. Although live attenuated vaccines play important roles in the prevention of this disease, they also have several limitations, such as residual virulence and difficulty in the differentiation of immunisation and infection. We developed and evaluated a new bacteria ghost vaccine of Brucella abortus A19 by a new double inactivation method. The results showed that the bacterial ghost vaccine of Brucella represents a more safe and efficient vaccine for Brucellosis. We further characterised the antigenic components and signatures of the vaccine candidate A19BG. Here, we utilised a mass spectrometry-based label-free relative quantitative proteomics approach to investigate the global proteomics changes in A19BGs compared to its parental A19. The proteomic analysis identified 2014 proteins, 1116 of which were differentially expressed compared with those in A19. The common immunological proteins of OMPs (Bcsp31, Omp25, Omp10, Omp19, Omp28, and Omp2a), HSPs (DnaK, GroS, and GroL), and SodC were enriched in the proteome of A19BG. By protein micro array- based antibody profiling, significant differences were observed between A19BG and A19, and a number of signature immunogenic proteins were identified. Two of these proteins, BMEII0032 and BMEI0892, were confirmed to be differential diagnostic antigens for the A19BG vaccine candidate. In conclusion, using comparative proteomics and antibody profiling, protein components and signature antigens were identified for the ghost vaccine candidate A19BG, which are valuable for further developing the vaccine and its monitoring assays.
Project description:Gene expression analysis of wild-type and STING knock-out mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages (mBMDM) infected with Brucella abortus or transfected with Brucella abortus DNA. Genes whose expression are affected by Brucella abortus in a STING-dependent manner will be identified and signaling pathways regulated by STING will be elucidated.
Project description:We describe the isolation of sufficient Brucella abortus RNA from primary host cell environment using modified reported methods for RNA-seq analysis, and simultaneously characterize the transcriptional profiles of intracellular B. abortus and bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMM) from BALB/c mice at 24 h (replicative phase) post-infection.
Project description:MucR is one of the few transcriptional regulatory proteins that has been linked to Brucella pathogenesis. We used custom-made Affymetrix B. abortus strain 2308 derived GeneChips to copare the gene expression properties of wild type and isogenic mucR mutant cells.
Project description:Isogenic deletion and truncation of specific genes encoding RNases in Brucella abortus were analyzed for changes in gene expression. The main goal of this work is to determine the mRNAs that exhibit dysregulation when small regulatory RNAs (i.e., Bsr8) or RNases (i.e., RNaseE and RNaseJ) are invactivated in Brucella abortus. Small regulatory RNAs often control gene expression by binding directly to mRNAs to block translation or induce their degradation, and RNA from a deletion of one sRNA gene, bsr8, was analyzed to uncover the mRNAs that may be controlled by BsrB. RNases are enzymes that cleave RNAs during processing, turnover, and regulatory events, and RNaseE and RNaseJ appear to be important for B. abortus virulence. Therefore, to determine the mRNAs potentially targetd by these RNases, RNA from a strain harboring a RNaseE truncation and a strain carrying a deletion of rnaseJ were analyzed. In the end, the objective of this study was to gain insight into the regulatory patterns of specific B. abortus sRNAs and RNases.
Project description:Brucella abortus is an important zoonotic pathogen that causes severe economic loss to husbandry and poses a threat to human health. The B. abortus A19 live vaccine has been extensively used to prevent bovine brucellosis in China. However, A19 has the limitation of diagnosis interference and residual virulence for the host. In this study, a novel genetically marked vaccine, A19ΔvirB12, was generated and evaluated. The results indicated that A19ΔvirB12 was able to provide effective protection against B. abortus 2308 (S2308) challenge in mice and vaccinated sera can be distinguished from infected sera. However, previous studies have found that the accuracy of the serological detection method based on VirB12 protein needs to be improved. Therefore, we attempted to identify potential supplementary antigens with differential diagnosis function using label-free quantitative proteomics. Eighteen proteins identified only in S2308 were screened, and 7 of them were predicted to have high probability of antigenicity. In addition, 12 virulence factors were upregulated in S2308. The upregulation pathways of S2308 were significantly enriched in quorum sensing, ATP-binding cassette transporter, and metabolism. Several proteins related to cell division were significantly downregulated, while some proteins involved in transcription were upregulated in S2308.