A PROPOSED DIVISION OF THE PESTIVIRUS GENUS USING MONOCLONAL-ANTIBODIES, SUPPORTED BY CROSS-NEUTRALIZATION ASSAYS AND GENETIC SEQUENCING

Sixty-six pestiviruses from ruminant and porcine hosts were analysed w ith a panel of 76 monoclonal antibodies raised against 9 different vir uses. Reactivity was used to construct epitope similarity maps for all of the viruses. Four principal virus subgroups were demonstrated. One subgroup equated to classical swine fever virus (CSFV) and included m ost porcine pestiviruses but none from ruminants. A second subgroup co ntained mainly viruses of bovine origin, including reference bovine vi ral diarrhoea viruses (BVDV) such as NADL; however viruses from pigs a nd sheep were also represented. A third subgroup represented by refere nce strains of border disease virus (BDV) comprised mainly ovine isola tes, but also viruses from pigs. The fourth and most recently defined subgroup contained no reference strains of CSFV, BVDV or BDV, but incl uded atypical viruses from cattle, sheep and pigs. The subgrouping sch eme was supported by genetic comparisons between representative viruse s from the 4 subgroups and by virus neutralisation with polyclonal ser a.