I267L Is Neither the Virulence- Nor the Replication-Related Gene of African Swine Fever Virus and Its Deletant Is an Ideal Fluorescent-Tagged Virulence Strain

• Published in: Viruses 2021-12, Vol.14 (1), p.53
• Main Authors: Zhang, Yanyan, Ke, Junnan, Zhang, Jingyuan, Yue, Huixian, Chen, Teng, Li, Qian, Zhou, Xintao, Qi, Yu, Zhu, Rongnian, Wang, Shuchao, Miao, Faming, Zhang, Shoufeng, Li, Nan, Mi, Lijuan, Yang, Jinjin, Yang, Jinmei, Han, Xun, Wang, Lidong, Li, Ying, Hu, Rongliang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: African swine fever; African Swine Fever - virology; African swine fever virus (ASFV); African Swine Fever Virus - genetics; African Swine Fever Virus - physiology; Animals; Antibodies, Viral; Asfarviridae; Blood; deletion; Disinfectants; Epidemics; Gene Deletion; Gene expression; Genomes; Genotype & phenotype; Green fluorescent protein; Hogs; I267L; Immunization; Phenotype; Phenotypes; Plasmids; Proteins; Replication; Sus scrofa; Swine; Swine Diseases - virology; Vaccines; Viral Proteins - genetics; Viral Vaccines - immunology; Viremia; Virulence; Virulence - genetics; Virulence Factors - genetics; Virus Replication - genetics; Viruses
• ISSN: 1999-4915; 1999-4915
• DOI: 10.3390/v14010053

African swine fever virus (ASFV) is the causative agent of African swine fever (ASF) which reaches up to 100% case fatality in domestic pigs and wild boar and causes significant economic losses in the swine industry. Lack of knowledge of the function of ASFV genes is a serious impediment to the development of the safe and effective vaccine. Herein, was identified as a relative conserved gene and an early expressed gene. A recombinant virus (SY18ΔI267L) with gene deletion was produced by replacing of the virulent ASFV SY18 with enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) cassette. The replication kinetics of SY18ΔI267L is similar to that of the parental isolate in vitro. Moreover, the doses of 10 TCID ( = 5) and 10 TCID ( = 5) SY18ΔI267L caused virulent phenotype, severe clinical signs, viremia, high viral load, and mortality in domestic pigs inoculated intramuscularly as the virulent parental virus strain. Therefore, the deletion of does not affect the replication or the virulence of ASFV. Utilizing the fluorescent-tagged virulence deletant can be easy to gain a visual result in related research such as the inactivation effect of some drugs, disinfectants, extracts, etc. on ASFV.