Vaccination of chickens with a chimeric DNA vaccine encoding Eimeria tenella TA4 and chicken IL-2 induces protective immunity against coccidiosis

A fusion DNA vaccine co-expressed Eimeria tenella TA4 and chicken IL-2 (chIL-2) was constructed and its efficacy against E. tenella challenge was observed. TA4 gene of E. tenella and chIL-2 gene were cloned into expression vector pcDNA3.1 and pcDNA4.0c in different forms, producing vaccines pcDNA3.1-TA4-IL-2, pcDNA3.1-TA4 and pcDNA4.0c-IL-2. The expression of aim genes in vivo was detected by RT-PCR and western blot. Animal experiment was carried out to evaluate the immune efficacy of the vaccines. Results indicated these DNA vaccines were successfully constructed and the antigen genes could be expressed effectively in vivo. The animal experimental results showed that DNA vaccines could obviously alleviate cecal lesions, body weight loss and increase oocyst decrease ratio. The ACI of pcDNA3.0-TA4-IL-2 group was 192, higher than that of pcDNA3.1-TA4 group. The results suggested that TA4 was an effective candidate antigen for vaccine and co-expression of cytokine with antigen was an alternative method to enhance DNA vaccine immunity.