| pubmed-article:7810422 | pubmed:abstractText | In the present study we investigated the virulence and neural spread of pseudorabies virus (PRV) strains with mutations in the gene encoding glycoprotein I (gI) in 3-week-old pigs which were intranasally infected. Mutant M303 (lambda 125, 126) lacks amino acids valine-125 and cysteine-126 in an immunodominant antigenic region of gI which contains 2 discontinuous antigenic domains, whereas mutant virus M304 (lambda 59, 60) lacks amino acids glycine-59 and aspartic acid-60 in a continuous antigenic domain. Mutant M301 contains a frame shift mutation. Both mutants M301 (gI-) and M303 (lambda 125, 126) were not virulent for pigs, whereas mutant M304 (lambda 59, 60) was as virulent as wild-type PRV. All gI mutant viruses replicated in the oropharyngeal mucosa, although M304 (lambda 59, 60) and wild-type PRV replicated to higher titres than M303 (lambda 125, 126) and M301 (gI-). In contrast to M304 (lambda 59, 60) and wild-type PRV, both mutant viruses M301 (gI-) and M303 (lambda 125, 126) were not recovered from any part of the central nervous system at day 6 after infection. To study the spread of M301 (gI-) in the central nervous system in more detail, a second experiment was done in which 100-fold more virus was intranasally administered and virus was recovered from various tissues at day 4 after infection. Again, no gI-negative virus was isolated from the central nervous system. We concluded that deleting the amino acids valine-125 and cysteine-126 decreases virulence and reduces neurotropism to the same degree as deleting the gI protein. In addition, gI-negative virus does not spread in the central nervous system of pigs, probably because the transport of the virus across the synapse is hampered. | lld:pubmed |
