• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.362-366
• /
• 2005

Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae is an important pig pathogen, which is responsible for swine pleuropneumonia, a highly contagious respiratory infection. To develop subunit vaccines for A. pleuropneumoniae infection, the Apx toxin genes, apxI and apxII, which are thought to be important for protective immunity, were expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and the induction of immune responses in mice was examined. The apxI and apxII genes were placed under the control of a yeast hybrid ADH2-GPD promoter (AG), consisting of alcohol dehydrogenase II (ADH2) and the GPD promoter. Western blot analysis confirmed that both toxins were successfully expressed in the yeast. The ApxIA and ApxIIA-specific IgG antibody response assays showed dose dependent increases in the antigen-specific IgG antibody titers. The challenge test revealed that ninety percent of the mice immunized with ApxIIA or a mixture of ApxIA and ApxIIA, and sixty percent of mice immunized with ApxIA survived, while none of those in the control groups survived longer than 36 h. These results suggest that vaccination of the yeast ex­pressing the ApxI and ApxII antigens is effective for the induction of protective immune responses against A. pleuropneumoniae infections in mice.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
• /
• v.43 no.2
• /
• pp.247-253
• /
• 2003

Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae causes a highly contagious pleuropneumoniae in swine. The bacterium produces several virulence factors such as exotoxin, LPS, capsular polysaccharide, etc. Among them, the exotoxin, called Apx, has been focused as the major virulence factor, and the toxin consists of 4 gene cluster. apx CABD. apxA is the structural gene of toxin and has four different types, I, II, III, and IV. As the first step of development of a new subunit vaccine, the three different types of apxA gene were amplified from A. pleuropneumoniae isolated from Korea by PCR with primer designed based on the N- and C-terminal of the toxin. The sizes of apxIA, IIA and IIIA were 3,073, 2,971 and 3,159bps, respectively. The comparison of whole DNA sequences of apxIA, IIA and IIIA genes with those of the reference strain demonstrated 98%, 99% and 98% homology, respectively. In addition, the phylogenetic analysis was performed based on the amino acid sequences compared with 12 different RTX toxin family using the neighbor-joining method. ApxA proteins of Korean isolates were identical with reference strains in this study. All ApxA proteins were expressed in E. coli with pQE expression vector and identified using Western blot with polyclonal antibodies against culture supernatants of A. pleuropneumoniae serotype 2 or 5. The sizes of each expressed ApxA protein were about 120, 110, 125 kDa (M.W.), respectively. The results obtained in this study could be used for the future study to develop a new vaccine to porcine pleuropneumoniae.