Identification of immunoreactive proteins of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis

Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) is the cause of a chronic enteritis of ruminants (bovine paratuberculosis-Johne disease) that is associated with enormous worldwide economic losses for the animal production industries. Diagnosis is based on observation of clinical signs, on the detection of antibodies in milk or serum or on evaluation of bacterial culture from feces. The limit of these methods is that they are not able to detect the disease in the subclinical stage and are applicable only when the disease is already in an advanced status. For this reason the main purpose of this study is to use the MAP proteome to detect novel immunoreactive proteins that may be helpful for paratuberculosis diagnoses. 2D electrophoresis and 2D immunoblotting of MAP proteins were performed using sera of control cattle and paratuberculosis infected cattle in order to highlight the specific immunoreactive proteins. Among the assigned identifiers to immunoreactive spots it was found that most of them correspond to surface-located proteins while three of them have never been described before as antigens. The identification of these proteins improves scientific knowledge that could be useful for paratuberculosis diagnoses. The sequence of the identified protein can be used for the synthesis of immunoreactive peptides that could be screened for their immunoreaction against bovine sera infected with MAP. All MS data have been deposited in the ProteomeXchange Consortium with identifier PXD001159 and DOI 10.6019/PXD001159. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.