Coccidiosis is caused by intra-cellular infection of Eimeria spp., which goes through a complex life cycle in the intestinal mucosa of infected hosts. Specific immunoglobulins (IgY) could be produced in egg yolk by immunizing hens with specific antigens. In the present study, we cloned the E. maxima gam56 gene, expressed the GST-GAM56 fusion protein and raised IgY to GST-GAM56 in hens. The anti-GST-GAM56 IgY antibody was isolated and used to treat chickens infected with E. maxima oocysts. Intramuscular injection of the antibodies provided minimal protection against parasite infection. However, oral dosing of the IgY 3 or 5 d after oocyst inoculation significantly improved body weight gain, reduced oocyst output and intestinal lesion score were reduced at 3 or 5 d after oocyst challenging, compared to the untreated control group. Our findings suggest that the IgY to gam56 could be an effective prophylactic or therapeutic agent against E. maxima infection in chickens and should have a practical application value.

Phytophthora root rot is one of the most prevalent diseases in the world, which can infect the seedlings and plants, withsubstantial negative impact on soybean yield and quality. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of post-transcriptionalregulators of gene expression during growth and development of organisms. A soybean disease-resistance varietySuinong 10 was inoculated with Phytophthora sojae race No. 1, and the specific miRNA resistant expression profile wasacquired by microarray for the first time. Different expressional miRNAs have been found after comparing the results ofthe treated sample with the control sample. Furthermore, the target genes of different expressional miRNAs were predicted.Two miRNAs, cbr-mir-241 and ath-miR854a, regulated the disease-resistance process directly through their targets, someenzymes. Another two miRNAs, gma-miR169a and ath-miR169h, participated in disease-resistance regulation as transcriptionfactors. Similarly, one miRNA, ptc-miR164f, has been reported to regulate the plant development. All of these studieswould be served as the foundation for exploring the resistance mechanism.

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.), one of the most important legumes in the world, evolved different types of cultivars due to its partial cross-pollination. The development of simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers from expressed sequence tags (EST) provided a useful tool for investigation of its genetic diversity. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the genetic diversity of faba bean from China and Europe using EST-SSR markers. 5 031 faba bean ESTs from the NCBI database were downloaded and assembled into 1 148 unigenes. A total of 107 microsatellites in 96 unigenes were identified, indicating that merely 8.36% of sequences contained SSRs. The most abundant SSR within faba bean was tri-nucleotide repeat motif, and among all the tri-nucleotide repeats, the motif AAG/CTT was the most abundant type. Based on these results, 11 EST-SSR markers were used to assess the genetic diversity of 29 faba bean cultivars from China and Europe with two to three alleles per locus. The polymorphism information content value ranged from 0.0644 to 0.4278 with an average of 0.2919. Principal coordinate analysis (PCA) and phylogenetic clustering based on these 11 EST-SSR markers distinguished these cultivars into different groups. The results indicated that faba bean in China had a narrow genetic basis, and the additional sources of genetic cultivars/accessions should be introduced to enhance the genetic variability. The results of this study proved that the EST-SSR marker is very effective in evaluation of faba bean germplasm.