Virus strains
Pseudorabies virus (PRV) strain HeNLH/2017 (Accession no. MT775883), Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) strain HN07-1(Accession no. KX766378) and HNhx (Accession no. KX766379), Senecavirus A strain HeNNY-1/2018 (Accession no. MK357116) and porcine circovirus 2 (PCV2) strain DF-1 (Accession no. JN119255) were isolated and stored in our lab. Classical swine fever live vaccines (CSFV, strain CVCC AV1412), Porcine transmissible gastroenteritis (TGEV, strain WH-1R) and Porcine epidemic diarrhea live vaccine (PEDV, strain AJ1102-R) and Swine Japanese encephalitis live vaccine (strain SA14-14-2) were purchased from Wuhan Keqian Biology Co., Ltd and stored in our lab.
Viral nucleic acid extraction
Viral nucleic acid was extracted from each sample using TaKaRa MiniBEST Viral RNA/DNA Extraction Kit Ver.5.0 according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The cDNA was synthesized using the PrimeScriptTMRT Master Mix Kit (TaKaRa Biotechnology Co., Ltd., Dalian, China). The viral DNA/cDNA were stored at -40℃ for further research.
Primers and probes design
The primers and probes were designed and evaluated by Primer3Plus (http://www.primer3plus.com) based on the genome sequence of Pig/HLJ/2018 (Accession no. MK333180) (Table 1). The probe for B646L gene was labeled with reporter dye 6-carboxyfluorescein (FAM) and the 3’-quencher BHQ1. The probe for MGF505-2R gene was labeled with reporter dye VIC and the 3’-quencher BHQ1. The sequence alignment was analyzed by clustal W method with Megalign program (DNASTAR, Inc., Madison, WI, USA) to confirm the conservation of primers and probes among the genotype II and I reference ASFV strains (Table 2) (Fig. 1). The primers and probes above were all synthesized by Sangon Biotech, China.
Recombinant standard plasmid construction
The full length of B646L gene (1941 base pairs) and MGF505-2R gene
(1581 base pairs) of ASFV genome (Accession no. MK333180) were synthetized and cloned into pUC57 vector by Sangon (Shanghai, China), respectively. The concentration of these recombinant standard plasmids was determined by NanoDrop One (ThermoFisher Scientific). According to the DNA copy number calculation formula [double strand DNA copy numbers (copies/mL) = 6.02 × 1023 (copies/mL) ×concentration (g/mL) / DNA length×660], the copy numbers of pUC57-B646L and pUC57-MGF505-2R plasmids were 2.9 × 109 copies/µL and 1.5 × 109 copies/µL, respectively. All these plasmids were stored in -20℃ before use.
Analytic specificity determination
The specificity of the duplex TaqMan real-time PCR assay was first evaluated using combined control plasmids and 9 other viral DNA/cDNA, including PRV, PCV2, PRRSV (HN07-1 and HNhx), CSFV, JEV, PEDV, TGEV and SVA. The nuclease-free water was used to be negative control. The reaction volume for real-time PCR was 25 µL which contained 2 µL template (standard plasmids or viral DNA/cDNA), 2 µL primers mixture (2.5 µM for each primer) and 1µL probes mixture (5 µM for each probe) (the final optimized concentrations of the primers and probes were 0.2 µM), 0.25 µL ROX Reference Dye II (50x), 12.5µL Premix Ex TaqTM (Probe qPCR, 2 x Conc.) and then add nuclease-free water to 25 µL. The amplification was carried out under the default programs using 7500 Fast Real-Time PCR System. The reaction program was pre-denaturation 95℃ for 20s, and then 40 cycles of 95℃ for 3s, 60℃ for 30s.
Analytic sensitivity and repeatability determination
The standard plasmids were serially diluted 10-fold with nuclease-free water, corresponding to 5.8 × 109 to 5.8 × 100 copies/reaction for pUC57-B646L and 3.0 × 109 to 3.0 × 100 copies/reaction for pUC57-MGF505-2R, respectively. Standard curve and repeatability were determined from the triplicates of each dilution. The reaction system and amplification condition referred to the methods described above.
Clinical sample detection
A total of 26 pig serums collected from suspected ASFV infected pigs were detected by our novel duplex TaqMan real-time PCR method and VetMAXTM ASFV Detection Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific). The serums and extracted DNA were provided and stored by ZhengZhou ZhongDao Biotechnology Co., Ltd. For the reaction system, the amount of template (DNA) was 5 µL and the other components were added as above.