Técnicas de phage display têm sido amplamente empregadas para o mapeamento de epítopos os quais tem servido como base para o desenvolvimento de vacinas moleculares. Esta técnica foi aplicada no mapeamento de epítopos do Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus. Neste estudo, potenciais imunógenos foram identificados pela adoção de um processo em que os clones de fagos foram analisados por bioinformática, previamente à realização dos testes. Os resultados demonstraram a possibilidade da identificação de importantes mimetopos do R. (B.) microplus para o desenvolvimento de vacinas através da seleção de bibliotecas de phage display associada à análise de bioinformática.

Phage display techniques have been widely employed to map epitope structures which have served as the basis for developing molecular vaccines. We have applied this technique to map specific epitopes of Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus. In the present study, we have identified the potential immunogens using a process in which the selected phage clones were analyzed through bioinformatics, prior to final field tests. The present study demonstrates the feasibility of identifying important R. (B.) microplus phagotopes for vaccine development through screening of phage-displayed random peptide libraries and bioinformatics tools.

After the advent of the genome projects, followed by the discovery of DNA polymorphisms, basic understanding of gene expression is the next focus to explain the association between polymorphisms and the level of gene expression, as well as to demonstrate the interaction among genes. Among the various techniques for the investigation of transcriptional profiling involving patterns of gene expression, quantitative PCR is the simplest analytical laboratory technique. The objective of this work was to analyze two strategies of a competitive PCR technique for the quantification of the pig growth hormone (GH) gene expression. A pair of primers was designed targeting exons 3 and 5, and two competitive PCR strategies were performed, one utilizing a specific amplicon as a competitor, and the other utilizing a low-stringency PCR amplicon as a competitor. The latter strategy proved to be easier and more efficient, offering an accessible tool that can be used in any kind of competitive reaction, facilitating the study of gene expression patterns for both genetics and diagnostics of infectious diseases.