Mf. Murphy et al., DIAGNOSIS OF MALIGNANT CATARRHAL FEVER BY POLYMERASE CHAIN-REACTION AMPLIFICATION OF ALCELAPHINE HERPESVIRUS-1 SEQUENCE, Journal of wildlife diseases, 30(3), 1994, pp. 377-382
We derived sequence information from cloned HindIII fragment ''D'' of
alcelaphine herpesvirus 1 strain WC11, an agent of malignant catarrhal
fever (MCF). Based on this sequence, oligonucleotide primers were sel
ected and synthesized for use in a polymerase chain reaction amplifica
tion assay. These primers were used to test samples of total nucleic a
cids isolated from multiple tissues taken from an Indian gaur (Bos gau
rus gaurus) at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in San Diego, California
(USA) which had clinical signs of a natural infection of MCF. Six of
eight tissue samples examined had amplifiable sequences present. A nuc
leic acid probe complementary to the sequence of the original clone be
tween the primer sites also was synthesized and used to confirm the id
entity of the amplified viral sequences, thus providing a diagnosis of
MCF at the molecular level.