Characterization of foot-and-mouth disease serotype Asia1 viruses grown in the presence of polyclonal antisera in serology and nucleotide sequence analysis

Abstract

Foot-and-mouth disease viruses (FMDV) have a high rate of mutation and spontaneous mutants can be readily. isolated in the laboratory. In this study, plaque purified FMDV Asial vaccine strains (IND 63/72 and IND 491/97) were passaged in-vitro in Baby Hamster Kidney-21 cell monolayers in the presence of sub-neutralizing levels of antiviral polyclonal sera (APS), raised in guinea pigs against the purified and inactivated whole virus particles of IND 63/72, IND 491/97 and IND 13/01. After serial passages under selective immune pressure, the viruses starts growing in the presence of undiluted sera and showed certain characteristics like an increased resistance to neutralization by APS and reduction in plaque counts on titration in plaque assay. Cross-neutralization of these viruses with above-mentioned APS revealed selection of three complete and one partial polyclonal antibody resistant (PAR) viruses based on the 'r' value in micro neutralization test. Alterations were detected at several amino acid residues in the structural protein-coding P1 region. Many of the residues inferred to be positively selected sites in other serotypes of this virus were also prone to substitution under immune selection pressure in Asia1 virus. The present work extends the finding that selection exerted by host antibody also plays a major role in the rapid evolution of FMDV Asia1, as observed in other serotypes.