Title Exchange of the VP5 of Infectious Bursal Disease Virus in a Serotype I Strain with that of a Serotype II Strain Reduced the Viral Replication and Cytotoxicity
Author Liting Qin, Xiaole Qi, Honglei Gao, Yulong Gao, Zhigao Bu, and Xiaomei Wang*
Address Division of Avian Infectious Diseases, National Key Laboratory of Veterinary Biotechnology, Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Harbin 150001, P. R. China
Bibliography Journal of Microbiology, 47(3),344-350, 2009,
DOI
Key Words infectious bursal disease virus, VP5, mosaic virus, replication, cytotoxicity
Abstract Infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV), belonging to Avibirnavirus genus in the Birnaviridae family, consists of two segments of double-strand RNA. There are two distinct serotypes of IBDV, the pathogenic serotypeI and the non-pathogenic serotype II. Comparison of the deduced amino acid sequences of a panel of VP5 genes retrieved from GenBank revealed a high identity among strains within the serotype I or serotypeII group but a low identity between strains across two serotypes. In this study, we rescued two mosaic viruses, rGtGxVP5 and rGt2382VP5 by exchanging the VP5 gene of a cell culture-adapted serotype I Gt strain with its counterpart of the very virulent IBDV Gx strain, or a non-pathogenic 23/82 strain of the serotype II. In comparison to the parental strain rGt virus, the rGtGxVP5 showed the similar viral replication, cytotoxicity and the ability of inducing apoptosis; however, the other mosaic virus rGt2382VP5 had a lower titer and a reduced cytotoxicity. Although exchange of VP5 within serotype I group did not alter the viral replication and cytotoxicity of Gt strain, exchange of VP5 in the serotype I with that of a serotypeII reduced the viral replication and cytotoxicity on chicken embryo fibroblast (CEF) cells. Therefore, the VP5 of serotype II may be one of the factors responsible for the distinct pathogenic features of two serotypes.