Protein aggregation complicates the development of baculovirus-expressed African horsesickness virus serotype 5 VP2 subunit vaccines.

Detection of African horsesickness virus and discrimination between two equine orbivirus serogroups by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction.

A reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), based on the gene encoding the NS2 protein of African horsesickness virus (AHSV), was developed for rapid serogroup-specific detection of AHSV. The specificity of RT-PCR products was confirmed by Southern blot hybridization using a radioactively labelled cDNA probe specific for the NS2 gene. This RT-PCR could discriminate between all k...

Cloning, characterization and expression of the gene that encodes the major neutralization-specific antigen of African horsesickness virus serotype 3.

The gene encoding the outer capsid protein, VP2, of African horsesickness virus serotype 3 (AHSV-3) has been sequenced in its entirety from cDNA clones of the segment 2 RNA, and compared with the previously published VP2 gene sequence of AHSV-4. AHSV-3 genome segment 2 was shown to be 3221 nucleotides in length, encoding a protein of 1057 amino acids with a 50.5% identity to the amino acid sequ...

Structural insight into African horsesickness virus infection.

African horsesickness (AHS) is a devastating disease of horses. The disease is caused by the double-stranded RNA-containing African horsesickness virus (AHSV). Using electron cryomicroscopy and three-dimensional image reconstruction, we determined the architecture of an AHSV serotype 4 (AHSV-4) reference strain. The structure revealed triple-layered AHS virions enclosing the segmented genome an...

Development of Bluetongue Virus Multicomponent Vaccines Using a Novel Baculovirus System

The difficulties associated with obtaining completely safe, live virus vaccines by the traditional procedures of virus passage and selection of attenuated forms, as well as the risks and expenses involved in preparing killed or subunit vaccines from virulent viruses, may now be overcome using recombinant DNA technologies. Genetic engineering offers a variety of ways of preparing viral vaccines ...

Development of new African horsesickness cell culture killed vaccines