Construction of DNA vaccines and their induced protective immunity against experimental Eimeria tenella infection

In an attempt to construct a DNA vaccine against chicken coccidiosis, the TA4 gene of Eimeria tenella strain BJ was ligated to the mammalian expression vector pcDNA3.1/Zeo(+) to give pcDNA3.1-TA4 (pcDT). Then, Et1A (E. tenella refractile body gene) was ligated to it, upstream, aiming to be expressed in fusion with TA4, giving pcDNA3.1-Et1A-TA4 (pcDET). The constructed DNA vaccines were given to broilers intramuscularly 10–15 min after the breasts had been pre-treated with 25% sucrose solution. At 7 days after the second vaccination, chickens were challenged with 3×10⁴ sporulated oocysts of E. tenella BJ. The chickens were killed and the lesion scores of the ceca, the relative body-weight gains and the numbers of oocysts in the ceca of each group of chickens were calculated at day 8 post-inoculation. Results indicated that both pcDT and pcDET could induce protective immunity against coccidial challenge. Their use could obviously reduce oocyst output and alleviate chicken body-weight decrease due to coccidial infection. An anti-coccidial index of 160 was achieved with a treatment of 50 µg pcDET and 100 µg pcDT.