Application of immunogenomics to study intestinal innate and adaptive immunity against coccidia parasites.

Authors: Lillehoj, Hyun

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/11/2007
Publication Date: 9/24/2007
Citation: Lillehoj, H.S. 2007. Application of immunogenomics to study intestinal innate and adaptive immunity against coccidia parasites.Proceedings of Latin American Congress meeting, Sept. 24-29. Porto Alegra, Brazil.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Effective control of poultry pathogens which cause infectious diseases is becoming a major challenge to the poultry industry worldwide with increasing consumer’s demands for safe poultry products and escalating concerns on biosecurity measures for new-emerging, highly virulent strains of microbial pathogens of poultry . Many chicken pathogens enter the host through the gastrointestinal tract, and over the past few decades in-feed antibiotics and active vaccination have been the two main mechanisms of controlling infectious diseases. However, increasing government regulations on the use of growth promoting drugs in animal production, there is a need to develop alternative control strategies against poultry pathogens of economic importance. However, effective control strategies against pathogens can only be accomplished by comprehensive analysis of the basic immunobiology of host-pathogen interactions at local sites of infection. Recent progress in biotechnology involving immunology, immunogenetics and functional genomics is facilitating scientists to investigate disease resistance and protective immune mechanisms in an unprecedented speed. Furthermore, recent availability of poultry genome sequences and the availability of several tissue-specific chicken cDNA microarrays are facilitating the rapid application of functional immunogenomic technologies to poultry disease research. In summary, studies using functional genomic, immunology and bioinformatic approaches are providing novel insights into disease processes and protective immunity to chicken pathogens and allowing the design of effective control strategies against many important poultry pathogens.