Summary: Babesia bovis is a tick-borne pathogen that remains an important constraint for the development of cattle industries in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Effective control can be achieved by vaccination with live attenuated phenotypes of the parasite. However, these phenotypes have a number of drawbacks, which justifies the search for new, more efficient immunogens based mainly on recombinant protein technology. In the present paper, ribosomal phosphoprotein P0 from a Brazilian isolate of B. bovis was produced and evaluated with regard to conservation and antigenicity. The protein sequence displayed high conservation between different Brazilian isolates of B. bovis and several Apicomplexa parasites such as Theileria, Neospora and Toxoplasma. IgG from cattle experimentally and naturally infected with B. bovis as well as IgG1 and IgG2 from naturally infected cattle reacted with the recombinant protein. IgG from cattle experimentally infected with Babesia bigemina cross-reacted with B. bovis recombinant P0. These characteristics suggest that P0 is a potential antigen for recombinant vaccine preparations against bovine babesiosis. The aims of the present paper were to analyse the genetic conservation of the P0 gene among Brazilian isolates of B. bovis and produce recombinant P0 (rPO) from a Brazilian isolate and evaluate its antigenicity with sera from cattle naturally or experimentally infected with B. bovis and sera from cattle experimentally infected with B. bigemina in an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).

Publication year: 2009

Types of publication: Journal article

Unit: Embrapa Southern Livestock