Volume 41, Number 3, May–June 2010
|Number of page(s)||11|
|Published online||10 December 2009|
|How to cite this article||Vet. Res. (2010) 41:26|
Virulence-associated trimeric autotransporters of Haemophilus parasuis are antigenic proteins expressed in vivo
Centre de Recerca en Sanitat Animal (CReSA), UAB-IRTA, Campus de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona – Edifici CReSA, 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
2 Institut de Recerca i Tecnologia Agroalimentàries (IRTA), Barcelona, Spain
3 HIPRA, S.A. Amer, Girona, Spain
4 Present address: Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, USA
* Corresponding author: email@example.com
Accepted: 7 December 2009
Glässer’s disease is a re-emerging swine disease characterized by a severe septicaemia. Vaccination has been widely used to control the disease, although there is a lack of extended cross-protection. Trimeric autotransporters, a family of surface exposed proteins implicated in host-pathogen interactions, are good vaccine candidates. Members of this family have been described in Haemophilus parasuis and designated as virulence-associated trimeric autotransporters (VtaA). In this work, we produced 15 recombinant VtaA passenger domains and looked for the presence of antibodies directed against them in immune sera by immunoblotting. After infection with a subclinical dose of H. parasuis Nagasaki, an IgG mediated antibody response against 6 (VtaA1, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10) of the 13 VtaA of the Nagasaki strain was detected, indicating that they are expressed in vivo. IgA production against VtaA was detected in only one animal. VtaA were more likely to be late antigens when compared to early (Omp P5 and Omp P6) and late (YaeT) defined antigens. Antibody cross-reaction with two orthologs of Nagasaki’s VtaA5 and 6, VtaA15 and 16 of strain HP1319, was also detected. No antibodies against VtaA were detected in the sera of animals immunized with a bacterin of the Nagasaki strain, suggesting poor expression in the in vitro conditions used. Taken together, these results indicate that VtaA are good candidate immunogens that could be used to improve H. parasuis vaccines. However, their capacity to confer protective immunity needs to be further studied.
Key words: Haemophilus parasuis / VtaA / OMP / antibody / cross-reactivity
© INRA, EDP Sciences, 2010
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any noncommercial medium, provided the original work is properly cited.