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The recent advent of high-throughput sequencing machines producing big amounts of short reads has boosted the interest in efficient string searching techniques. As of today, many mainstream sequence alignment software tools rely on a special data structure, called the FM…

Vaccination remains the most effective tool for control of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) both in endemic countries and as an emergency preparedness for new outbreaks. FMD vaccines are chemically inactivated virus preparations and the production of new vaccines is critically…

Highly polymorphic major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules are at the heart of adaptive immune responses, playing crucial roles in many kinds of disease and in vaccination. We report that breadth of peptide presentation and level of cell surface expression of class…

The Hepatitis B virus X protein (HBx) contributes centrally to the pathogenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). It has been suggested that the transcriptional activation of cyclin D1 by HBx is implicated in the development of HCC. However, numerous studies have shown that…

Cellular therapies using immune cells and in particular dendritic cells (DCs) are being increasingly applied in clinical trials and vaccines. Their success partially depends on accurate delivery of cells to target organs or migration to lymph nodes. Delivery and subsequent…

The origin of recent parallel outbreaks of the high pathogenicity H5N8 avian flu virus in Europe and in Japan can be traced to a single source population, which has most likely been spread by migratory birds. By using Bayesian coalescent methods to analyze the DNA sequences…

African swine fever virus (ASFV) causes a lethal haemorrhagic disease of swine which can be transmitted through direct contact with infected animals and their excretions or indirect contact with contaminated fomites. The shedding of ASFV by infected pigs and the stability of…

African horse sickness virus (AHSV) is an Orbivirus of the family Reoviridae that causes severe pathology in equids. Previous work in our laboratory showed the presence of AHSV-specific CD8+ T cells in mice immunized with recombinant Modified Vaccinia Ankara (rMVA)…

The incidence of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in the GB has been increasing since the 1980s. Immunisation, alongside current control measures, has been proposed as a sustainable measure to control bTB. Immunisation with Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) has…

T-lymphocytes are central targets of Marek's disease, a major chicken disease induced by the oncogenic alphaherpesvirus, Marek's disease virus (MDV). T-lymphocyte infection is also associated with immunosuppression and virus latency. To decipher viral morphogenesis in T…