Development of a recombinant pB602L-based indirect ELISA assay for detecting antibodies against African swine fever virus in pigs

African swine fever(ASF),caused by the African swine fever virus(ASFV),is a devastating disease of domestic and wild pigs.There is no effective vaccine,and the control of the disease relies mainly on surveillance and early detection of infected pigs.Previously,serological assays,such as ELISA,have been developed mainly based on recombinant structural viral proteins of ASFV,including p72,p54,and p30.However,the antibodies against these proteins do not provide efficient protection against ASFV infection in pigs.Therefore,new serological assays that can be applied for clinical diagnosis and evaluating serological immune response in vaccinated pigs are still required.In this study,we expressed and purified a recombinant p B602 L protein.The purified p B602 L protein was then used as an antigen to develop an indirect ELISA assay.This assay has no cross-reaction with the anti-sera against the 15 most common pig pathogens in China,such as classical swine fever virus,pseudorabies virus,and porcine parvovirus.This assay and a commercial ELISA kit were then used to detect 60 field pig serum samples,including an unknown number of antiASFV sera.The coincidence of the two assays was 95%.Furthermore,the p B602 L-based ELISA was employed to test the antibody responses to the seven-gene-deleted ASFV strain HLJ/18-7 GD in pigs.The results showed that the antibody levels in all vaccinated pigs,starting from the 10 th day post-inoculation,have increased continuously during the observation period of 45 days.Our results indicate that this p B602 L-based indirect ELISA assay can be employed potentially in the field of ASFV diagnosis.

Development of an Indirect Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay for Seromonitoring Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia Using Recombinant Lipoprotein LppQ of Mycoplasma mycoides subsp mycoides SC as Antigen

Mycoplasma mycoides subsp mycoides SC （MmmSC） is the etiological agent of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia （CBPP）. The lipoprotein LppQ encoded by lppQ gene is specific to MmmSC and is found in the type strain and in field strains isolated in Europe, Africa, and Australia, as well as in vaccine strains. No serological cross-reactions were observed with the related mycoplasmas of the Mycoplasma mycoides cluster. The N-terminal domain of the mature lipoprotein LppQ is hydrophilic, and it induces a strong, specific, early, and persistent immune response in naturally and experimentally infected animals. Mycoplasma-specific TGA （Trp） codons are utilized as stop codons in most other organisms. The lppQ N-terminal fragment from MmmSC HVRI X strain, the Chinese strain for CF antigen production, was mutated with one-step overlapping extension PCR. Sequence analysis confirmed the successful mutation from A to G in codon 198 in the lppQ gene. The fragment containing the mutation site was subcloned into the pET32a expression vector. The recombinant protein with molecular weight of 42 kDa was purified using the Ni-NTA His.Bind purification kit, with a purity of up to 95%. Western blot indicated that the standard positive serum of CBPP could react with the recombinant protein. The purified protein was diluted to 0.35 μg mL^-1, and coated to microtiter enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay （ELISA） plates. Indirect ELISA reaction conditions were optimized. The value of P/N was determined to be 4.8 （0.934/0.193）, the sensitivity to be 95.8% （46/48）, and the specificity to be 98.9% （161/163）. 3 817 cattle serum samples from three different provinces were detected by the indirect ELISA and CFT. The Kappa value is 0.63, which is middle or high agreement between the two methods.

Microcystin-LR detection based on indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

Microcystins(MCs)are a group of closely related toxic cyclic heptapeptides produced by common cyanobacte-ria,which cause lots of accidents and threatens human health.In this paper,an indirect competitive enzyme-linked immu-nosorbent assay(ic-ELISA)was established and used to detect microcystin-LR(MC-LR)in drinking and surface waters.The concentration of coating antigen was 5 mg/mL,the dilution of monoclonal antibody MC10E7 was 1:3000,the dilution of enzyme tracer(goat anti-mouse IgG-peroxidase)was 1:3000,the standard concentration of MC-LR ranged from 0.001 mg/L to 30 mg/L,and o-phenylenediamine was used as substrate.The assay showed high relativity with high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC)with a correlation coefficient of more than 99%.The relative standard deviation was less than 10%,the detection limit was achieved down to 0.01 mg/L and up to 5.1 mg/L.The quantitative detection range was from 0.03 mg/L to 3 mg/L,and the antibody had high specificity for[4-arginine]microcystins.It performed well in spite of the influence of the real samples.