Biological Characteristics and Pathogenicity Analysis of a Low Virulence G2a Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus
Kechen Yu, Xueting Liu, Ying Lu, Meijing Long, Jiaguo Bai, Qiuying Qin, Xueli Su, Guifu He, Xue Mi, Chunjie Yang, Ruomu Wang, Hejie Wang, Ying Chen, Zuzhang Wei, Weijian Huang, Kang Ouyang
Abstract
The current epidemic of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) G2 has caused huge economic losses to the pig industry. Evaluation for low virulence of the PEDV strains of subgroup G2a would be useful for the future development of effective vaccines. In this study, 12 field strains of PEDV were obtained successfully, and they were characterized from Guangxi, China. The neutralizing epitopes of the spike proteins and the ORF3 proteins were analyzed to evaluate antigenic variations. One of the G2a strains, CH/GXNN-1/2018, was selected for pathogenicity analysis, and it showed that the CH/GXNN-1/2018 strain had low virulence in suckling piglets. These results provide a promising naturally occurring low-virulent vaccine candidate for further study.