Molecular characterization and phylogenetic analysis of VP1 of porcine enteric picornaviruses isolates in Italy.

Porcine enterovirus (PEV), Porcine Teschovirus and Porcine sapelovirus, belonging to the family Picornaviridae, are ubiquitous and mainly cause asymptomatic infections in pigs. In this study, a total of 40 Italian porcine picornavirus isolates were characterized by sequencing the capsid VP1-encoding gene. This procedure turned out to be a useful diagnostic tool for the molecular identification of porcine enterovirus, teschovirus and sapelovirus strains and for the study of molecular epidemiology and evolution of these viruses confirming the possibility of correlating virus genotype to serotype.

Foot-and-mouth disease virus: a first inter-laboratory comparison trial to evaluate virus isolation and RT-PCR detection methods.

Five European reference laboratories participated in an exercise to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of their routinely employed RT-PCR tests and cell cultures for the detection and isolation of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus. Five identical sets of 20 coded samples were prepared from 10 vesicular epithelia, which were derived from submissions from suspect cases of FMD or swine vesicular disease (SVD). Sixteen samples were derived from six FMD virus positive epithelia representing four different serotypes (two each of types O and A and one each of types Asia 1 and SAT 2), two from samples which had been found to be negative by antigen ELISA and virus isolation (VI) in cell culture and two from SVD virus positive epithelia.

Cultivation of foot-and-mouth disease virus in BHK21 cells grown in microcarrier culture system.

When BHK21 cells were grown according to the microcarrier's system, they reached the highest concentration in 72 hrs. The infectivity of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) virus in BHK21 microcarrier culture increased 10 times compared with the conventional monolayer culture in rolling bottles.

Induction and characterization of swine beta interferon.

Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) strain "H" and Polyinosinic-Polycytidylic acid (Poly I:C) were used for interferon (IFN) induction in secondary pig kidney cells. A functional IFN system was detected and characterized. A wide similarity with the correspondent human and bovine systems was appreciated, with particular regard to the kinetics of synthesis.