Abstract

Avian coccidiosis is the intestinal disease of poultry. It is caused by the infection of Eimeria species. It has a devastating effect on the poultry industry worldwide. Two species, Eimeria tenella and Eimeria maxima, cause severe losses in the poultry industry. Eimeria tenella is used as a model species to understand the Eimeria species. In all Apicomplexan parasites, microneme is used to host cell invasion. Microneme protein 2 in Eimeria tenella (EtMic-2) has an important role in parasite adhesion to the host cell to initiate the invasion process. Ten gut samples of broiler chickens were collected randomly from infected chickens. All caecal material was homogenized and RNA extracted by using Trizol reagent, then cDNA was formed with the help of enzyme reverse transcriptase. The gene EtMic-2 that encodes the Micronemes-2 protein was isolated by using gene-specific primers. PCR was used to obtain a large number of copies of that particular gene and sequence them. The sequence gene of EtMic-2 was compared with the available gene of Etmic-2 in GenBank, and the similarity of the nucleotide sequence was 98 and 97%, respectively. The purpose of this study to sequence the gene EtMic-2 also investigated for mutation and studied the phylogenetic relationship. Etmic-2 gene is a possible choice for a new vaccine against E.tenella infection in chickens.