Research

Screening of specific diagnostic peptides of swine hepatitis E virus

Kai Zhao^1,2 , Qiwen Liu³ , Ruisong Yu^2,4 , Zhen Li^2,4 , Jianyue Li³ , Hong Zhu^1,2 , Xiao Wu^1,2 , Furong Tan^1,2 , Jinbin Wang^1,2 and Xueming Tang^1,2

¹  Biotechnology Research Institute, Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 2901 Beidi Road, Shanghai, 201106, PR China

²  Key Laboratory of Agricultural Genetics and Breeding, Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 2901 Beidi Road, Shanghai, 201106, PR China

³  College of Life and Environment Sciences, Shanghai Normal University,100 Guilin Road, Shanghai 200234, PR China

⁴  Institute of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 2901 Beidi Road, Shanghai, 201106, PR China

author email corresponding author email

Virology Journal 2009, 6:186doi:10.1186/1743-422X-6-186

Published:	4 November 2009

Abstract

Background

Swine hepatitis E virus (swHEV) is a zoonotic disease that is considered a major problem in pig production and presents a threat to human health. Elucidation of the major antigenic epitopes of swHEV is essential for the effective control of swHEV epidemics.

Results

By bioinformatic analysis, we identified and then synthesized 12 peptides from open reading frames (ORFs) ORF1, ORF2 and ORF3, including swHEV-1 - swHEV-12. Using the results from ELISA, we selected swHEV-11 as the best candidate antigen and used it as a coating antigen for the development of peptide-based swine anti-HEV ELISA kits. The coefficient of variation (CV) the coefficient of variation (CV) varied between 4.3-7.2% in the same batch, and between 8.2-17.7% in six different batches. When comparing our swine peptide-based kit with the commercial recombinant-based kit, the humane anti-HEV IgG test had a 73.4% correspondence rate for them.

Conclusion

This is the first systemic study to screen the diagnostic peptides of swHEV and our findings strongly suggest that peptide swHEV-11 is a potent diagnostic reagent of swHEV that could be used in the development of highly efficient diagnostic assays for the specific and highly sensitive detection of anti-HEV activity in swine serum samples.