<p> <i>Mycobacterium marinum</i> is an established surrogate pathogen for <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> because of <i>M. marinum </i>'s strong conservation of thousands of orthologous genes, lower risk, lower financial burden to researchers, and similar pathology in fish. This pathogen causes TB-like chronic disease in a wide variety of fish species and can mount superficial infection of human tissues. As in human TB, the microbe grows within the host macrophages, can mount life-long chronic infections, and produces granulomatous lesions in target organs. One of the fish species known to manifest chronic "fish TB" is the small laboratory fish, Japanese medaka (<i>Oryzias latipes</i>). Recently, our lab documented the progression of the bacterium from the lumen of the gut to underlying tissues and to target organs to mount infection. Since the bacterium can be observed crossing the epithelia to mount infection, I tested to see if mucosal immunity against a wild-type challenge could be induced by initially priming the fish to a live, attenuated vaccine strain. This thesis demonstrates that inoculation by ingestion is an efficient mode by which medaka can become infected and vaccinated with <i>M. marinum.</i> Furthermore, my thesis shows that orally vaccinating fish with a live, attenuated strain indeed provides protection in the gut, liver, and kidney against a virulent, wild-type challenge. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:1585851 |
| Date | 07 April 2015 |
| Creators | Cheramie, Martin N. |
| Publisher | University of Louisiana at Lafayette |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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