The Preparation of Chicken Tracheal Organ Cultures and Their Application for Ciliostasis Test, Growth Kinetics Studies, and Virus Propagation.

Chicken tracheal organ cultures (TOCs) provide a simple ex vivo system that makes use of transverse section of tracheal rings extracted from embryos or adult birds to perform classical virological techniques for virus isolation, propagation and titrations, alongside with gene-expression analysis and virus-host interaction studies. Most IBV strains replicate well in TOCs, thus conveniently allowing growth kinetics analysis. Viral replication is revealed by observation of ciliostasis as marker of infection in tracheas extracted from birds ex vivo, as well as in vitro analysis providing a reliable infection model and a useful tool for titration.