ABSTRACT DNA vaccines could have potential advantages over other types of vaccines that the vaccines can induce strong cellular immune responses, cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) and Th 1 cells, without resorting to live organisms or complicated protein formulation. The cellular immune responses are especially required for the protection against the infections with intracellular bacteria, suggesting that the pathogens seem to be suitable targets of DNA vaccines among bacteria. However, their application to bacterial infections have been less well documented. We constructed a DNA vaccine in which the bacterial codon usage was optimized DNA vaccine could induce CTL and protective immunity against Listeria monocytogenes. So far, DNA vaccine has been mainly applied to tuberculosis. We showed in this paper that codon bias in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, unlike any other bacteria, is comparable to those in Mus musculus and Homo sapiens, suggesting that condon-optimization is not required for the DNA vaccine against tuberculosis. In the construction of DNA vaccines against bacteria, attempts should be made to increase translational efficiencies of bacterial genes in the DNA vaccines by optimization of condon usage and by changing the translation initiation sequence to the optimal sequence defined by Kozak.
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