Comparative Evaluation of the Diagnostic Potential of Two Major Core Proteins of Goatpox Virus Expressed in the Prokaryotic System

Members of the genus capripoxvirus (CaPV) encode more than 100 putative proteins and CaPV ORF 095 and 103 genes encode two major immunogenic core proteins that are partly exposed to the host immune system. In this study, full-length genes of these two core proteins of goatpox virus (GTPV) were over-expressed in E. coli BL21-codonPlus (DE3)-RIPL strain using pET32a vector and purified under denaturing conditions and characterized by SDS-PAGE. Expressed proteins were confirmed as 37 kDa (ORF 095) and 39 kDa (ORF 103) proteins in western blot. Both the proteins have shown a good immunoreactivity with anti-GTPV and -SPPV antibodies in optimized ELISA and they did not show any cross-reactivity with other viruses of sheep and goats. However, the ORF095 protein has shown better reactivity than ORF103 to a standard known positive serum when tested in optimized ELISA. Therefore, capripoxvirus-specific rORF095 alone or in combination with other CaPV proteins has the immense potential in developing ELISA as a coating antigen for sero-evaluation of capripox in sheep and goats.