Evaluation of the safety and efficacy of the novel Mycoplasma gallisepticum vaccine, Vaxsafe MG304, after spray-vaccination of 1-day-old specific pathogen-free chicks.

Mycoplasma gallisepticum causes chronic respiratory disease in poultry. A novel vaccine, Vaxsafe MG304 (the ts-304 strain), has greater protective efficacy in chickens than the Vaxsafe MG (strain ts-11) vaccine when delivered by eye drop at 3 weeks of age. Applying this vaccine in the hatchery to 1-day-old birds, using mass administration methods, would improve animal welfare and reduce labour costs associated with handling individual birds.

Validation of folate in a convenient yeast assay suited for identification of inhibitors of Alzheimer's amyloid-beta aggregation.

Previously in the search for chemopreventatives for Alzheimer's disease (AD), microbial cells with amyloid-beta (Abeta) protein fusions have been used to screen for compounds that reduce the aggregation, misfolding or oligomerization of Abeta. In the current study, such a system has been used to look at the effect of folate, whose deficiency has been associated with AD. A folate-deficient yeast strain producing Abeta fused to green fluorescent protein (GFP) that spontaneously misfolds/aggregates and suppresses green fluorescence was used to examine the effects of folinic acid on Abeta-GFP fluorescence.