African swine fever virus (ASFV) is the causative agent of African swine fever (ASF) which reaches up to 100% case fatality in domestic pigs and wild boar and causes significant economic losses in the swine industry. Lack of knowledge of the function of ASFV genes is a serious impediment to the development of the safe and effective vaccine. Herein, I267L was identified as a relative conserved gene and an early expressed gene. A recombinant virus (SY18ΔI267L) with I267L gene deletion was produced by replacing I267L of the virulent ASFV SY18 with enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) cassette. The replication kinetics of SY18ΔI267L is similar to that of the parental isolate in vitro. Moreover, the doses of 102.0 TCID50 (n = 5) and 105.0 TCID50 (n = 5) SY18ΔI267L caused virulent phenotype, severe clinical signs, viremia, high viral load, and mortality in domestic pigs inoculated intramuscularly as the virulent parental virus strain. Therefore, the deletion of I267L does not affect the replication or the virulence of ASFV. Utilizing the fluorescent-tagged virulence deletant can be easy to gain a visual result in related research such as the inactivation effect of some drugs, disinfectants, extracts, etc. on ASFV.
Mink refractory diarrhea is a seasonal disease that occurs in many mink farms in China. Mink circovirus (MiCV) has been recognized as the causative agent of the disease. The aim of the study was to develop a subunit vaccine against mink refractory diarrhea. A recombinant baculovirus strain expressing the capsid protein was constructed using the baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS). A subunit vaccine was developed based on the capsid protein with appropriate adjuvant. Then, a field trial was carried out in two districts in order to evaluate the efficiency of the subunit vaccine. The field trial indicated that in total, only 1.8% of the minks developed typical diarrhea in the vaccinated group compared with 74.5% in the control group. The vaccination could significantly reduce the infection rate of MiCV among the mink herds and could restrain the virus’ shedding from feces. Furthermore, the vaccinated group had a higher average litter size in the following year compared to the control group. Collectively, the results indicated that the subunit vaccine based on the capsid protein can provide reliable protection against MiCV infection.
Nanoemulsion is a new multi-component drug delivery system; the selection of different oil phases can give it special physiological activity, and play the role of “medicine and pharmaceutical excipients all-in-one”. In this paper, we used glycyrrhizic acid as the natural surfactant, and Blumea balsamifera oil (BB) and tea tree oil (TTO) as the mixed oil phase, to obtain a new green functional composite nanoemulsion. Using the average particle size and polydispersion index (PDI) as the evaluation criteria, the effects of the oil ratio, oil content, glycyrrhizic acid concentration, and ultrasonic time on the nanoemulsion were systematically investigated. The stability and physicochemical properties and biological activities of BB-TTO NEs prepared via the optimum formulation were characterized. The optimal prescription was BB: TTO = 1:1, 5% oil phase, 0.7% glycyrrhizic acid, and 5 min ultrasonication time. The mean particle size, PDI, and zeta potential were 160.01 nm, 0.125, and −50.94 mV, respectively. The nanoemulsion showed non-significant changes in stability after centrifugation, dilution, and 120 days storage. These nanoemulsions were found to exhibit potential antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activities. The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of BB-TTO NEs against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa is 2975 μg/mL, 2975 μg/mL, and 5950 μg/mL, respectively. A lower level of inflammatory cell infiltration and proportion of fibrosis were found in the synovial tissue of AIA rats treated with BB-TTO NEs. These findings demonstrate that the BB-TTO NEs produced in this study have significant potential for usage in antibacterial and anti-inflammatory areas.
Drug addiction, a chronic brain disease caused by interaction of in vitro drug toxification and in vivo gene susceptibility, has been widely studied but its underlining mechanism is so far been elucidated. A major goal in this field is to identify drug-induced molecular changes and their effects on brain function. By the advance of high throughput technologies in genomics and transcriptomics, the whole gene expression profile in addicted brain could be obtained and proved to be a very powerful tool to unclose the molecular mechanism underlying the addiction biology context. Here, we summarized the progress of serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) and microarray, as well as their application in drug addiction.
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