Veterinary Institute Research to Diagnose Systemic Disease in Sheep

Syngene is delighted to announce, Dymension, its unrivalled software for the analysis of 2D protein gels, is being used at one of Europe`s foremost veterinary schools, the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies in Scotland, to rapidly and accurately identify global changes in protein expression associated with immunity to parasitic gastroenteritis, the most commonly diagnosed systemic disease of sheep in the UK. BBSRC funded researchers at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies are using Dymension software to analyse 2D gels of protein extracts from the gastrointestinal mucosa of sheep, infected with the parasitic nematode Teladorsagia circumcincta, to identify key proteins involved in the immune exclusion of this, and related parasites. The research could lead to a better understanding of how natural immunity to these parasites occurs and could provide information to help design better vaccines and therapies to
prevent this disease.

Dr Jeremy Brown, a Research Fellow at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, commented: “We need to align gels and actively cluster data sets from large groups of animals to look at all the proteins associated with immunity. The latest version of Dymension has taken complicated activities and has nicely simplified them into a workflow method, allowing us to generate our data in a very straightforward and rigorous way.

Using Dymension, we`ve analysed 2D gel images to compare the mucosal proteome from 24 different sheep and have detected 951 different
spots, with results across gels being surprisingly consistent. We`re in the process of analysing selected spots by MALDI-TOF to identify which
proteins are involved in immunity.”