Caprine pleuropneumonia is a highly contagious disease of goats caused by Mycoplasma mycoides subsp Capri (Mmyca) and Mycoplasma mycoides subsp. mycoides (LC), causing severe economic loses to goat industry across Asia and Africa including India. The control of the disease largely depends on use of vaccines. Killed and live vaccines are having certain inherent drawbacks. DNA or recombinant protein based vaccines are promising tools for its effective control. Therefore the present study was designed which was aimed at characterizing the immunodominant surface proteins by serological and molecular approaches which could be used in the development of vaccines. Polyclonal sera against the Mmyca isolate reacted with a 62 kDa protein in all the isolates of Mmyca and MmmLC but not with other members of the mycoides cluster, showing antigenic specificity of LppA lipoprotein to Mmyca and MmmLC. The isolates used in the study were got characterized using cultural, biochemical and molecular methods. Upon amplification with group, cluster and mycoides group specific and species specific primers all the isolates produced amplicons of size ~715 bp, ~1500 bp, ~574 bp and ~195 bp respectively. The gene encoding the 62 kDa lipoprotein from the organism was cloned and analysed by sequencing. It showed a similarity of 96% with that of the published sequence. Further studies are required to explore its potential as an immune dominant antigen to be used as a recombinant or DNA vaccine.
Key words: Mycoplasma, Mycoides, Lppa, Protein, Vaccine
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