The transcriptional effects of deregulated myc gene overexpression are implicated in tumorigenesis in a spectrum of experimental and naturally occurring neoplasms. In follicles of the chicken bursa of Fabricius, myc induction of B-cell neoplasia requires a target cell population present during early bursal development and progresses through preneoplastic transformed follicles to metastatic lymp...

Invariant chain (Ii) isoform, through its thyroglobulin-like (Tg) domain, inhibits cysteine proteases during antigen presentation in vertebrates. In birds, the Ii of Muscovy Duck (MDIi) has 2 forms: MDIi-1 and MDIi-2 (MDIi isoform). To understand the genetic information and expression characteristics of MDIi-2, polymerase chain reaction, and bioinformatic analysis were performed for MDIi-2 from...

Glucocorticoid (GC) hormones play an important role in thymic T cell selection and in the development of autoimmune diseases. Previous studies have shown that the mammalian thymus itself is able to produce GC. In order to assess the importance of these findings in terms of the evolutionary development of the immune system, we investigated the functional presence of steroidogenic enzymes in prim...

The mechanisms by which viruses modulate the immune system include changes in host genomic methylation. 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) is the catalytic product of the Tet (Ten-11 translocation) family of enzymes and may serve as an intermediate of DNA demethylation. Recent reports suggest that 5hmC may confer consequences on cellular events including the pathogenesis of disease; in order to exp...

Infectious Bursal Disease (IBD) is a chicken disease economically important for the poultry industry in function of the immune depression that it causes. Disease control is made with different vaccines and vaccination programs. In present work, the pathogenicity of 3 intermediate vaccines (I1, I2 and I3), 2 intermediate more pathogenic (IP1 and IP2) and 3 vaccines containing strong virus (F1, F...

The enteric nervous system (ENS) develops from neural crest cells that migrate along the intestine, differentiate into neurons and glia, and pattern into two plexuses within the gut wall. Inductive interactions between epithelium and mesenchyme regulate gut development, but the influence of these interactions on ENS development is unknown. Epithelial-mesenchymal recombinations were constructed ...

In 2010, a novel Tembusu virus (TMUV) that caused a severe decrease in the egg production of ducks was isolated in southeast China. Given the novelty of this duck pathogen, little information is available regarding its pathogenesis. Here, we systematically investigated the replication kinetics of TMUV PTD2010 in adult male and female ducks. We found that PTD2010 was detectable in most of the pa...

Development of heterogeneity of immunoglobulin classes has been investigated in the chicken by studying the effects of antibody-mediated suppression of IgM synthesis. Treatment of 13-day embryos with purified goat antibodies to IgM resulted in the elimination of IgM-containing cells from the bursa of Fabricius of 16- and 19-day embryos. When combined with bursectomy at hatching, administration ...

The reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), reverse passive haemagglutination assay (RPHA) and agar gel precipitation test (AGPT) were compared for the detection of infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) in various organs of experimentally infected broilers. RT-PCR and RPHA required a time of 8 and 1 hour, respectively, whereas AGPT showed precipitation reaction at least after...

The expression of human bcl-2 gene is de-regulated by t(14;18) translocation in most of follicular lymphoma. Recent studies indicated that the bcl-2 gene product has an ability to block apoptosis of hematopoietic cells. To facilitate the analysis of the role of this gene in normal development using an animal model, we have isolated and partially characterized the chicken homologue of human bcl-...