Studentship: Dissecting the polyclonal antibody response to foot-and-mouth disease virus in cattle and buffalo.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious, acute viral disease of cloven-hoofed, domesticated and wild animals and crucial within the global food security agenda. Despite this, very little is known of the transmission dynamics of the virus in natural hosts (buffalo in Africa), in particular, how FMDV persists in the individual host, and the factors leading to spill-over events from wildlife reservoirs (buffalo) into livestock populations (cattle, pigs, and sheep).This project will determine the genetics underlying the protective immune response to FMDV by exploiting the natural resistance to FMD of the African buffalo (Syncerus caffer). Buffalo and cattle are closely related species that show differential resistance to several diseases including FMD. In cattle and other domestic livestock FMD is characterized by fever, lameness and vesicular lesions of the feet, tongue, snout and teats. In contrast, FMDV infection of African buffalo only causes mild or subclinical disease. Consequently this species is an effective reservoir host of FMDV South African Territories (SAT) 1-3 serotypes and poses considerable problems to livestock farmers and to wildlife conservation. This proposal brings together world-leading expertise in immunology, immunogenetics, virology and epidemiology to examine the genetic basis underlying this species-specific differential disease resistance. As FMDV protection is largely mediated by antibody, we will test the hypothesis that differences in the antibody responses between cattle and buffalo creates differential disease resistance to FMD. This fundamental research will inform future epidemiological studies and direct future vaccination strategies. Specifically, we will determine the differences between the cattle and buffalo immunoglobulin (Ig) heavy chain germline sequences; compare the natural antibody repertoire between cattle and buffalo; and compare the IgG antibody repertoire between cattle and buffalo after FMDV infection.

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