Duck Plague Virus pUL48 Protein Activates the Immediate-Early Gene to Initiate the Transcription of the Virus Gene

Duck plague caused by the duck plague virus (DPV) is an infectious disease that seriously harms the waterfowl breeding industry. The VP16 protein of α herpesvirus can bind to specific cis-acting elements upstream of the promoter of the immediate-early (IE, α) gene to promote the transcription of the IE gene, so it is also called the trans-inducer of IE gene (α-TIF). However, no studies on DPV α-TIF have been reported. This study investigated the DPV pUL48, a homolog of HSV-1 VP16, transcriptional activation region, target sequence, and viral protein affecting its transcriptional activation using a dual-luciferase reporter gene detection system, and pUL48 was identified as the α-TIF of DPV. (1) The regulation of pUL48 on DPV different gene promoters showed that pUL48 could activate all the promoters of IE genes (ICP4, ICP22, and ICP27) but not the promoters of early and late genes. (2) The activity of pUL48 to ICP4 and ICP22 promoters with different upstream lengths showed that pUL48 activated ICP4 and ICP22 promoters by acting on TAATGA (T) TAT element upstream of ICP4 promoter and TAATTATAT element upstream of ICP22 promoter, respectively. (3) Transcriptional activation of IE gene by truncated proteins of different lengths at the N-terminal of pUL48 was detected. The results showed that the transcriptional activation domain of pUL48 was amino acids 1–60 at the N-terminal, and amino acids 1–20 was its core region. In addition, it was found that pUL14, pUL46, and pUL47 significantly promoted the transcriptional activation of pUL48. The effects of loss of pUL47 and its nuclear localization signal on the nuclear entry and transcriptional activation function of pUL48 were further examined. The results showed that pUL47 could promote the nuclear entry of pUL48 through its nuclear localization signal at positions 40–50 and 768–777 amino acids, thus, enhancing the transcriptional activation function of pUL48 and synergistic promotion of viral gene transcription.

The LORF5 Gene Is Non-essential for Replication but Important for Duck Plague Virus Cell-to-Cell Spread Efficiently in Host Cells

Duck plague virus (DPV) can cause high morbidity and mortality in many waterfowl species within the order Anseriformes. The DPV genome contains 78 open reading frames (ORFs), among which the LORF2, LORF3, LORF4, LORF5, and SORF3 genes are unique genes of avian herpesvirus. In this study, to investigate the role of this unique LORF5 gene in DPV proliferation, we generated a recombinant virus that lacks the LORF5 gene by a two-step red recombination system, which cloned the DPV Chinese virulent strain (DPV CHv) genome into a bacterial artificial chromosome (DPV CHv-BAC); the proliferation law of LORF5-deleted mutant virus on DEF cells and the effect of LORF5 gene on the life cycle stages of DPV compared with the parent strain were tested. Our data revealed that the LORF5 gene contributes to the cell-to-cell transmission of DPV but is not relevant to virus invasion, replication, assembly, and release formation. Taken together, this study sheds light on the role of the avian herpesvirus-specific gene LORF5 in the DPV proliferation life cycle. These findings lay the foundation for in-depth functional studies of the LORF5 gene in DPV or other avian herpesviruses.

Molecular Characterization of Duck Plague Virus for Determination of TCID50

Duck plague is an enveloped DNA virus that belongs to the Anatid Herpes Virus; the Herpesviridae family is an acute and highly infectious duck, geese, and swan disease that causes tremendous economic losses of duck rearing in Bangladesh and other duck rearing countries. Therefore, we decided to isolate duck plague virus from recent fields’ outbreaks area and performed molecular detection and phylogenetic analysis to find out the similarities between our findings and other isolates around the world. Visceral organs of 13 suspected ducks from recent outbreaks area were collected by post-mortem examination for inoculum preparation. Several passages were performed to harvest into 9-11 old embryonated eggs Chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) route and duck embryo fibroblast (DEF) primary cell culture. DNA polymerase (446bp) and DNA polymerase (UL, 602bp) genes were used for molecular detection by Polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Pathogenicity was done with duckling and TCID50 on DEF. Molecular characterization was performed from extracted DNA of duckling and 2 Positive PCR products were partially sequenced for phylogenetic analysis of their origin and nucleotide variations. Sequenced data was analyzed to reveal genetic relationships among constructed phylogenetic tree for understanding potential transmission with origin of virus and data was then submitted to gene bank and got accession number for DPV-BR1-MN937272 and DPV-BR-2-MN937273. Among 13 samples, 4(30.77%) were found positive by PCR using DNA polymerase at 446 bp and UL at 602 bp gene. Chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) was observed hemorrhagic after 72 days and duck embryo fibroblast (DEF) become round as showed cytopathic characteristics after 48h of infection .Duckling showed that isolated virus was highly pathogenic as characteristics signs of post-mortem examination. Therefore, this has found that recent isolates have similarity with Bangladesh, India and China isolates. Moreover, TCID50 has confirmed the isolates have accepted titer to be a vaccine strain. Res. Agric., Livest. Fish.8(1): 125-133, April 2021