A non-toxic recombinant protein rSUMO-CPBm4 as a potential vaccine candidate against Clostridium perfringens type C beta enterotoxemia.

Beta toxin (CPB) is a lethal toxin and plays a key role in enterotoxemia of ruminants caused by Clostridium perfringens type C strain. The existing vaccines based on crude CPB need time-consuming detoxification and difficult quality control steps. In this study, we synthesized the rCPBm4 of C. perfringens type C strain and small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO)-tag CPBm4 (rSUMO-CPBm4) by introducing four amino acid substitutions: R212E, Y266A, L268G, and W275A. Compared with rCPBm4, rSUMO-CPBm4 was expressed with higher solubility in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3). Neither rCPBm4 nor rSUMO-CPBm4 was lethal to mice. Although rCPBm4 and rSUMO-CPBm4 were reactogenic with polyclonal antibodies against crude CPB, rabbits vaccinated with rSUMO-CPBm4 developed significant levels of toxin-neutralizing antibody (TNA) titers that conferred protection against crude toxin challenge. These data suggest that genetically detoxified rSUMO-CPBm4 is a promising subunit vaccine candidate for C. perfringens type C beta enterotoxemia.

Recovery of viable porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus from an infectious clone containing a partial deletion within the Nsp2-encoding region.

Non-structural protein 2 (Nsp2) of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) is the most variable region and postulated to play an important role in cell and tissue tropism of PRRSV. To investigate the role of Nsp2 in the viability and growth of PRRSV in cells in vitro, two cDNA clones were constructed containing a deletion of 63 consecutive nucleotides (pWSK-DCBAd63) or 117 nucleotides (pWSK-DCBAd117) within the Nsp2-encoding region of PRRSV (BJ-4). The clone pWSK-DCBAd63 was infectious and produced viable recombinant virus, whereas clone pWSK-DCBAd117 could not be rescued. The rescued virus was able to induce CPE typical of PRRSV on MARC-145 cells and was stably propagated during sequential in vitro cell passages, like the virus recovered from the full-length cDNA clone of PRRSV BJ-4. In comparison to the parental virus (BJ-4) and the virus recovered from the full-length cDNA clone of the BJ-4 strain, the rescued virus from pWSK-DCBAd63 exhibited enhanced growth kinetics, reaching the peak progeny virus titer by 48 h postinfection. These observations suggest that the Nsp2-encoding region is necessary for productive virus infection, and partial deletion does not influence the viability and propagation of PRRSV in cell culture, which may provide a way to insert a foreign gene into the viral genome as a marker for differentiation.