RESEARCH ARTICLE Exploring Early and Late Toxoplasma gondii Strain RH Infection by Two-Dimensional Immunoblots of Chicken Immunoglobulin

Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular apicomplexan parasite infecting warm-blooded verte-brate hosts, with only early infection stage being contained with drugs. But diagnosis differencing early and late infection was not available. In the present investigation, 2-dimensional immunobloting was used to explore early and late infections in chickens. The protein expression of T. gondii was determined by image analysis of the tachyzoites prote-ome separated by standard-one and conventional two-dimentional gel polyacrylamide electrophoresis (2D- PAGE). Pooled gels were prepared from tachyzoites of T. gondii. A representative gel spanning a pH range of 3-10 of the tachyzoite proteome consisted of 1306 distinct polypeptide spots. Two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) combined with 2-DE immunoblotting was used to resolve and compare immunoglobulins (Igs) M & G pat-terns against Toxoplasma gondii strain RH (mouse virulent strain). Total tachyzoite proteins of T. gondii were separated by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and analyzed by West-ern blotting for their reactivity with the 7 and 56 days post-infection (dpi) SPF chicken anti-sera. Different antigenic determinant patterns were detected during analysis with M an