Evaluation of Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) ts-304 vaccine as a live attenuated vaccine in turkeys

Abstract

© 2018 Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) is an important pathogen of poultry worldwide that causes chronic respiratory disease (CRD) in chickens and infectious sinusitis in turkeys. Vaxsafe MG (strain ts-11) is a live attenuated temperature sensitive vaccine that has been proven to be effective in controlling CRD in chickens, but it is not efficacious in turkeys. The gapA gene, which encodes a mature cytadhesin protein with a molecular weight of approximately 105 kDa, is not expressed in strain ts-11 because a 20 base pair reiterated sequence introduces a frame shift and causes premature truncation of the translated peptide. A GapA positive clone, MG ts-304, isolated from strain ts-11 has been s..