Immunity and immunization against Clostridium perfringens-induced necrotic enteritis in broiler chickens
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The objective of this thesis work was to identify proteins important in immunity to necrotic enteritis (NE) in broiler chickens and to develop a vaccine using candidate protein antigen(s). The first study identified seven secreted immunogenic proteins uniquely expressed by a virulent strain of 'C. perfringens' that reacted strongly to serum antibodies from immune birds. These were alpha-toxin, theta-toxin, fructose 1,6-biphosphate-aldolase (FBA), glyceraldehydes-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GPD), pyruvate:ferredoxin oxidoreductase (PFOR), elongation factor-G (EF-G) and a Hypothetical Protein (HP). In addition, intestinal antibodies from immune birds reacted strongly with alpha-toxin and HP. The second study determined the role of these proteins in protection against NE following intramuscular immunization. All proteins significantly protected broiler chickens against relatively mild NE challenge but, in addition, alpha-toxin, HP and PFOR significantly protected birds against more severe challenge. Immunized birds developed high antigen-specific antibodies in serum and intestines. This study concluded that certain secreted 'C. perfringens ' proteins including alpha-toxin are involved in immunity to NE. The third study investigated the efficacy of HP, PFOR and FBA when delivered mucosally to chickens through an attenuated 'Salmonella 'vaccine vector in immunizing against NE. Two proteins, HP and FBA, showed significant protection against a severe challenge and birds developed serum and mucosal antibody responses to both 'C. perfringens' and 'Salmonella 'antigens. This study showed that it is possible to immunize broiler chickens against NE using attenuated 'Salmonella 'expressing ' C. perfringens' antigens, but that further work is required to optimize antigen expression and delivery by the vaccine strain. In conclusion, these studies showed that certain secreted 'C. perfringens' proteins including alpha-toxin are important in NE immunity and that it is possible to immunize broiler chickens orally using attenuated ' Salmonella 'as vaccine vectors to deliver certain 'C. perfringens ' protective antigens mucosally in protecting effectively against NE.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".