Antigenic and Molecular Characterization of Recent Infectious Bursal Disease Virus Isolates in China

Eleven infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) strains isolated recently from China were compared with the early classical virulent strain CJ801, the chicken embryo fibroblast-adapted (CEF) variant strain GZ902, and the attenuated vaccine strains BJ836, BK912, and LM to discern the evolutionary characteristics of IBDV in China at both antigenic and genetic levels. Virus neutralization (VN) assay showed that all ten very virulent (vv) IBDV strains belong to the same subtype as attenuated strains, whereas the other variant isolate strain BX could be attributed to other subtype of the variant strain GZ902. Antigen-capture ELISA (AC-ELISA) determined by a panel of monoclonal antibodies (Mabs) against classical and variant strains showed further that among these vv strains, nine strains except for strain NC had no reaction with neutralizing Mab B69. The vv strains SC and YV had no reaction with non-neutralizing Mabs 2B8 and 2C4, respectively, whose epitopes were located in classical IBDV strains. On the other hand, there is no alteration in antigenic epitopes located in the variant strain BX as that of the variant GZ902. Sequence comparison of the highly variable region (HVR) of the VP2 proteins showed that these vv strains had 98.6–100.0% identities to European and Asian vv strains at amino acid level. For the vv strains NC, SC, and YV, all had one amino acid substitution at the major hydrophilic domains, indicating that new vv strains are evolving. In addition, the vv strains DMS and NC had amino acid residue 279N as well, showing that the substitution of amino acid at this position might not be related to the virulence of IBDV. The variant strain BX had one amino acid substitution in the two major hydrophilic domains and two unique amino acids 249K and 254S as the other early variant strains, and shared 97.3% of amino acid identity to the variant strain VarE. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that the recent Chinese vvIBDVs and the previous European and Asian vv strains still belong to a genetic group and the variant strain BX to the other genetic group, which is more closely related to the European classical virulent strain F52/70 and the American classical virulent strain STC than to the early Chinese classical virulent strain CJ801, showing that the recent vv and variant strains that spread widely in the country might be derived from Europe and America than from early Chinese classical virulent strains.