Analytical chemistry tracks antibody response in M bovis sensitised cattle

The antibody response of cattle sensitised artificially to the Mycobacterium bovis tuberculosis pathogen has been compared with that of infected cows using an analytical chemistry process built around two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE).

A team from the University of Ottawa and Canadian Food Inspection Agency undertook the analytical chemistry in order to learn more about how M bovis purified protein derivative (PPD) tuberculin is recognised by cattle sera in the two groups.

They created a sterile filtered PPD (SF-PPD) using a nine-week-old supernatant of the M bovis culture and applied 2D-PAGE to determine the culture filtrate proteins (CFPs) which constituted it.

While 200 discrete CFP spots were resolved from their SF-PPD, tuberculin obtained from autoclaved culture supernatant resolved into fewer than 65 spots.

However, tuberculin skin tests on the two cattle groups indicated the same set of CFPs were subject to an antibody-boosting effect in both the artificially sensitised and infected cows.

The findings are published in BMC Veterinary Research, which addresses aspects of prevention, epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment of animal diseases.