Susceptibility of different cell cultures to equine herpesvirus -1

Abstract EN

This work was carried out to compare between the susceptibility of three cell lines including Fetal Equine Kidney cells (FEK-Tc13) ; Madin-Darby Bovine Kidney cells (MDBK) and Rabbit Kidney cells (RK-13) to the infection with neuropathogenic strain of equine herpes virus type 1 (Ab4p).

It was found that the FEK-Tc13 cell culture was the most susceptible cell line for virus replication yielding a virus titer of 2 x 107 plaques forming unites (PFU) / ml followed by RK-13 and MDBK cells which yield a virus titer of 2 x 106 PFU / ml and 4x105 PFU / ml ; respectively.

Studying of the virus growth kinetics revealed that the best time to obtain the highest titer was 72 hours post inoculation and the observed cytopathic effect in all cell cultures was characterized by cell rounding, granulation of the cytoplasm and cell degeneration ended with detachment of cells from the culture surface.

Polymerase chain reaction detected one band of 1066-bp of the viral genome when DNA was extracted from FEK-Tc13, RK-13 and MDBK cells.

The restriction map analysis of EHV-1 genome with BamH1 enzyme, revealed bands of expected size in both FEK-Tc13 and RK-13 infected cells and there was no extra BamHI cut in the viral DNA extracted from MDBK infected cells.