Vaccines have prevented the emergence of many diseases around the world, significantly improving global health. Unfortunately, the current methods of vaccine production are expensive, sometimes making vaccines unaffordable to economically disadvantaged countries. Additionally, there is less research towards discovering a vaccine if it is only present in a developing nation. One example is East Coast Fever (ECF). ECF infects livestock in sub-Saharan Africa, killing thousands of animals a year. ECF has serious negative consequences to the economy and local farmers of the infected nations because of the large economical dependence on animals like cattle. The goal of this project is to use previous plant-based vaccine methodologies to attach the Tp1(03) antigen of the parasite that causes ECF, Theileria Parva, onto the coat protein (CP) of Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV). The development of this plant-based vaccine would be a more cost-effective and efficient approach to preventing ECF. The Tp1(03) insert has been successfully ligated with a pTRBO vector and infiltrated into Nictoiana benthamiana using Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Further analysis will be taken to confirm the proper formation of the TMV decorated with the Tp1(03) insert including protein extraction, SDS-PAGE and Western Blot experiments.

Engineering a recombinant east coast fever vaccine from the tobacco mosaic virus and Theileria parva Tp1(03) antigen

251st National Meeting (2016)

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