Thanks Daral. I'm happy to meet you all in such an interesting forum. Yes, Marcos still work for Hipra and we do a lot of work with IBDV seq. In fact we work in close colaboration with Natalia Majò and Rose Dolç to whom you probably know (CReSA in Barcelona).

See you (electronically) in the forum and Good luck with the hard work of being the administrator...

jaime

Jaime - What areas of the IBDV genome are you sequencing? Are you seeing any viruses with Threonine at position 222 in Spain?

We do VP2 sequencing (whole gene). In most cases we find clasic vv-IBDV. However, we found a couple of variant viruses in 2007 and two more in 2008. We know that variants co-circulate together with vvIBDV strains but in a very low proportion...by now.

Is anyone in Spain using variants in a vaccine? I seem to remember talking to Marcos about this possibility a few years ago. Without knowing how widespread they are, it probably is not yet recommended.

Not at all. Still people is using classical vv-IBDV-based vaccines (MLV or killed). I guess this is a consequence of the subclinical nature of the natural infection due to variants. Perhaps they are established in some companies (few [hudge] of them control the local market) but they are not even reported or monitored.

I am Guillermo Zavala, associate professor at the Poultry Diagnostic and Research Center, Department of Population Health, University of Georgia.Thank you for your invitation to participate and thank you for your efforts.

Hello everyone. I recently received a double Bachelor's Degree in Food Science and Microbiology. I currently work at a meat processor in Minnesota as their microbiologist. My primary duties include shelf-life testing and environmental sampling. I'm still trying to figure out my ultimate career goals, but I'm considering either owning a food safety laboratory or going into research. I hope to use this site to learn more about microbiology and perhaps increase my understanding of things I already know.

Paul:

Great to have you. Our numbers are growing every day so I am sure there are members with lots of experience in food microbiology. Have a look around the site and don't be afraid to ask questions or answer them.

Hi folks, my name is Bruce Akey and I am the Director of the Animal Health Diagnostic Center at Cornell University. We are both the state regulatory/surveillance laboratory for NY as well as a full service, all species laboratory for all comers. I think this is a great experiment and look forward to monitoring and participating in the experiment.

Cheers,

Bruce