Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, Department of
Date of this Version
Spring 5-9-2012
Citation
Submitted to Virus Research.
Abstract
Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus is a significant swine pathogen which exhibits considerable sequence diversity. In an attempt to identify highly conserved T-cell epitopes contained in proteins of this virus, we examined heptadecamer peptides spanning the sequence of the PRRSV nonstructural proteins 9, 10 and 11, all of them are highly conserved, for their ability to elicit a recall proliferative and interferon-gamma response in peripheral blood mononuclear cells obtained from pigs immunized against the type-II PRRSV strain FL-12. These studies led to the identification of seven peptides, two from each NSP 9 and NSP 10 and, three from NSP 11 that appear to contain T-cell epitopes. Comparison of the amino acid sequence of these seven peptide sequences to the analogous sequences from a diverse sample of type-II PRRSV strains indicated that these sequences are highly conserved and thus contain highly conserved T-cell epitopes. The identified epitopes may be important in the formulation of immunogens to provide broad cross-protection against diverse PRRSV strains.
Advisor: Fernando A. Osorio
Comments
A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The graduate college at the University of Nebraska In partial fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Master of Science, Major: Veterinary Sciences, Under the supervision of Professor Fernando A Osorio. Lincoln, Nebraska: August, 2012
Copyright (c) 2012 Rajeshwari Parida