Dong-Yan Li,Xing-Yang Cui,Xin-Yi Huang,Yue Hu,Xiao-Xiao Tian,Tao Wang,Yong-Bo Yang,Qian Wang,Zhi-Jun Tian,Xue-Hui Cai,Tong-Qing An

Front Vet Sci.2022 May 30;9:902822.doi: 10.3389/fvets.2022.902822. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a widespread disease with great economic importance in the pig industry. Although vaccines against the PRRS virus (PRRSV) have been employed for more than 20 years, differentiating infected from vaccinated animals remains challenging. In this study, all 907 non-structural protein 2 (NSP2) full-length sequences of PRRSV-2 available from GenBank were aligned. Two peptides, at positions 562-627 (m1B) and 749-813 (m2B) of NSP2, were selected, and their potential for use in differential diagnosis was assessed. Both m1B and m2B were recognized by PRRSV-positive pig serum in peptide-coated enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Further epitope identification yielded five overlapping short peptides for the immunodominant regions of m1B and m2B. Using the infectious clone of PRRSV HuN4-F112 as a template, the deletion mutants, rHuN4-F112-m1B, rHuN4-F112-m2B, and rHuN4-F112-C5-m1B-m2B, were generated and successfully rescued in Marc-145 cells. Growth kinetics revealed that the deletion of m1B and m2B did not significantly affect virus replication. Hence, m1B and m2B show potential as molecular markers for developing a PRRSV vaccine.

Keywords: differentiating infected from vaccinated animals vaccine; enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; non-structural protein 2; peptides; porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus.

Copyright © 2022 Li, Cui, Huang, Hu, Tian, Wang, Yang, Wang, Tian, Cai and An.