Salmonella vaccines with successful rats

1999/06/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Osasuna

A group of researchers at the University of California has used with rats a procedure that can help develop salmonellosis and vaccine against other infections, transforming the genes of the bacteria responsible for these diseases. A strain of salmonella took the gene that controls the enzyme called Dam (adenine methylase DNA), a mutated bacterium that was introduced in a group of rats with salmonellosis. The enzyme Dam controls the role of about twenty genes that influence the infectious process. According to researchers, without this enzyme, bacteria can be used as live vaccines.

Vaccinated rats were reintroduced Salmonella strains, 10,000 times more than the highest concentration that can cause death, but did nothing. The bacteria grafted with a modified gene was not able to develop proteins that make it deadly, but immunize the rats.