Abstract
Banna virus (BAV, genus Seadornavirus, family Reoviridae) is an arbovirus suspected to be responsible for encephalitis in humans. Two genotypes of this virus are distinguishable: A (Chinese isolate, BAV-Ch) and B (Indonesian isolate, BAV-In6969) which exhibit only 41% amino-acid identity in the sequence of their VP9. The VP7 to VP12 of BAV-Ch and VP9 of BAV-In6969 were expressed in bacteria using pGEX-4T-2 vector. VP9 was chosen to establish an ELISA for BAV, based mainly on two observations: (i) VP9 is a major protein in virus-infected cells and is a capsid protein (ii) among all the proteins expressed, VP9 was obtained in high amount and showed the highest immuno-reactivity to anti-BAV ascitic fluid. The VP9s ELISA was evaluated in three populations: French blood donors and two populations (blood donors and patients with a neurological syndrome) from Malaysia, representing the region where the virus was isolated in the past. The specificity of this ELISA was >98%. In mice injected with live BAV, the assay detected IgG-antibody to BAV infection 21 days post-injection, which was confirmed by Western blot using BAV-infected cells. The VP9 ELISA permits to determine the sero-status of a population without special safety precautions and without any requirements to propagate the BAV. This test should be a useful tool for epidemiological survey of BAV.
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