Abstract
African swine fever (ASF) is a viral disease that affects members of the Suidae family such as African bush pigs, warthogs, but also domestic pigs, and wild boar. It is transmitted by direct contact of naïve with infected animals, by soft ticks of the Ornithodoros genus, or indirectly by movement of infected animals, improper disposal of contaminated animal products or other sources related to human activity. The recent spread of ASF into Eastern and Central European countries is currently threatening the European pig industry. The situation is aggravated as to-date no efficient vaccine is available. African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a large enveloped ds DNA-virus encoding at least 150 open reading frames. Many of the deduced gene products have not been described, less functionally characterized. We have analysed ASFV protein expression in three susceptible mammalian cell lines representing a susceptible host (wild boar) and two non-susceptible species (human and green monkey) by mass spectrometry and provide first evidence for the expression of 23 so far uncharacterized ASFV ORFs. Expression levels of several newly identified ASFV proteins were remarkably high indicating importance in the viral replication cycle. Moreover, expression profiles of ASFV proteins in the three cell lines differed markedly.
Highlights
In the past decades, African swine fever (ASF) has repeatedly been introduced from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe
The three cell lines used in this study were fully susceptible to infection with the recombinant African swine fever virus (ASFV) OURT 88/3-ΔTK-GFP expressing GFP under the control of the late ASFV p72 promotor[15,16,17]
Before preparing samples for the mass spectrometry (MS) analysis the infection conditions were adjusted to ensure that completely infected cell monolayers were used for the preparation of the protein extracts in order to achieve high sensitivity for the detection of ASFV proteins and to enable the MS based quantitative comparison of ASFV protein expression between the different cells
Summary
Catharina Keßler[1], Jan H. African swine fever (ASF) is a viral disease that affects members of the Suidae family such as African bush pigs, warthogs, and domestic pigs, and wild boar. It is transmitted by direct contact of naïve with infected animals, by soft ticks of the Ornithodoros genus, or indirectly by movement of infected animals, improper disposal of contaminated animal products or other sources related to human activity. The westward expansion of the disease is a serious threat to the pig industry in central and western European countries[2,3] In spite of this increasingly threatening situation and many efforts, no effective vaccine has been developed to-date[4]. Since they have been extensively used for infection experiments with ASFV in the past
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