Epitopes on glycoprotein C of bovine herpesvirus-1 (BHV-1) that allow differentiation between BHV-1.1 and BHV-1.2 strains

In cattle, bovine herpesvirus-l (BHV-1) can cause a mild genital disease kn own as infectious pustular vulvovaginitis (IPV) and a more severe respirato ry disease known as infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR), On the basis o f epidemiological data, it has been proposed that these diseases are caused by strains with different genotypes (IBR by BHV-1.1 and IPV by BHV-1.2 str ains), By using a panel of 237 BHV-1 isolates, a monoclonal antibody (MAb 7 1) was found that failed to react with all 54 putative IPV strains in the p anel, and another MAb (77) was found that did not react with 16 of these 54 IPV strains. Because MAbs 71 and 77 also failed to react with a BHV-1.1 gl ycoprotein C (gC)-deletion mutant, it was hypothesized that both MAbs recog nize BHV-1.1 gC, By marker-rescue experiments and by expressing fragments o f the BHV-1.1 gC gene in recombinant baculoviruses, it was shown that both MAbs indeed recognize BHV-1.1 gC, MAb 71 recognizes the N-terminal half and MAb 77 recognizes the C-terminal half of BHV-1.1 gC, In a PEPSCAN analysis with 12-mer oligopeptides, MAb 71 reacted with overlapping peptides contai ning gC amino acid residues 75-80 and MAb 77 did not react in this analysis . The differences in gC found in this study may contribute to the biologica l differences between BHV-1.1 and BHV-1.2.