Expression and evaluation of recombinant P32 protein based ELISA for sero-diagnostic potential of capripox in sheep and goats

The study is aimed to develop and evaluate a recombinant P32 protein based ELISA for sero-monitoring and sero-surveillance using known and random/suspected serum samples for capripox infections from sheep and goats. Truncated P32 gene of goatpox virus (with an ORF of 750 bp) was expressed in E. coli BL-21 CodonPlus (DE3)-RIPL cells using pET32a vector and characterized by SDS-PAGE analysis and confirmed by western blotting as 48 kDa polyhistidine-tagged fusion protein. The protein was purified under denaturing conditions using 8M urea and characterized by SDS-PAGE and immunoblotting. The purified protein was used for optimizing ELISA in a chequerboard titration method using anti-GTPV serum as known positive. The optimized conditions were found to be 300 ng of protein/well, 1:10 dilution of antibody, 1:10000 dilution of rabbit anti-goat/sheep conjugate with 3% skim milk powder and 2% gelatin in phosphate buffer saline containing tween-20 as blocking buffer. The expressed protein was specific only for goatpox virus and sheeppox virus but did not react with related viruses of sheep and goats namely orf virus, peste de petits ruminants virus, bluetongue virus and foot and mouth disease virus. The optimized ELISA was evaluated using pre-vaccinated, post-vaccinated and also post-challenge sera. The assay was found to have a diagnostic specificity of 100/98.7% and sensitivity of 97.1/98.1% when compared to whole virus antigen based ELISA/SNT by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. The optimized ELISA is able to determine the progression of antibody response against GTPV and SPPV following vaccination and challenge in sheep and goats. The rP32 protein based ELISA was evaluated using random field serum samples (n = 1008) suspected for sheeppox and goatpox and it has shown positivity rate as 24.4%. The rP32 protein based ELISA was found to be specific and sensitive for sero-evaluation of sheeppox virus and goatpox virus following vaccination and infection in sheep and goats.