The African swine fever virus, which caused great losses in China, finally showed its prototype and looked like a "Russian doll".
10 6 18, China academy of sciences and China academy of agricultural sciences held a press conference, announcing the analysis of the fine three-dimensional structure of African swine fever virus particles and revealing the virus assembly mechanism, which laid a solid foundation for the development of a new African swine fever vaccine with good effect and high safety. Related papers were published in the journal Science on the same day.
Feng Zhongwu, vice president of China Academy of Agricultural Sciences, revealed at the meeting that the development of African swine fever vaccine has broken through the major technical bottleneck of large-scale production, completed the preparation and inspection of intermediate products under the production quality management standards, and is expected to enter clinical trials after approval.
China Science News learned from the press conference that this achievement was jointly completed by Rao team of Institute of Biophysics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Harbin Veterinary Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Bu team, Shanghai University of Science and Technology, Tsinghua University and other units.
Wang Xiangxi, correspondent of the newspaper, introduced that the three-dimensional structure of the whole particle of African swine fever virus was analyzed by the method of single-particle three-dimensional reconstruction for the first time, and the unique five-layer structure of African swine fever virus was clarified, including outer membrane, capsid, double membrane, core shell and genome.
Academician Rao, correspondent of * * *, told the China Journal of Science that the virus particle contains more than 30,000 protein subunits, which are assembled into spherical particles with a diameter of about 260 nanometers, and it is the largest virus particle to analyze its structure with near atomic resolution at present. In this study, several structural proteins of African classical swine fever virus were newly identified, and the atomic model of the main capsid protein p72 was established.
From 2065438 to August 2008, the Information Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China informed China of the first African swine fever epidemic, and the virus quickly spread to most parts of the country, causing huge losses. Since June, 20 19 and 1, African swine fever has occurred or is occurring in 26 countries around the world, and the spread speed of African swine fever virus has obviously accelerated in the past year, and it is getting worse.
It is an urgent scientific task to develop an effective African swine fever vaccine for epidemic prevention. Detailed analysis of the structure of African classical swine fever virus will provide an important basis for vaccine development.
Last year, Harbin Veterinary Research Institute successfully isolated African classical swine fever virus epidemic strain from domestic sick pigs. Due to the large scale and complex structure of African classical swine fever virus, it brings great challenges to relevant data collection.
Shanghai University of Science and Technology fully supports this work, ensuring that the research team collects high-quality data on the electron microscope platform for four consecutive months, and obtains massive data exceeding 100 T, and based on this, it analyzes the fine three-dimensional structure of African swine fever virus for the first time.
This study reveals a variety of potential protective antigens and key epitope information of African swine fever virus, expounds the complex arrangement and interaction mode of structural proteins, and puts forward the possible assembly mechanism of African swine fever virus.
* * * correspondent Bu said: "Because people's understanding of African swine fever is far from enough, there are still many problems from prevention and control technology to vaccine development. This study gives us a clearer understanding of an extremely complex virus such as African swine fever virus, which helps us to carry out further research and lays a solid foundation for developing a new African swine fever vaccine with good effect and high safety. "
Related paper information: China Science Journal.
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