African swine fever (ASF) is a highly lethal hemorrhagic viral disease of domestic pigs caused by African swine fever virus (ASFV). Although a good advance has been made to understand the virus, a safe and effective vaccine against ASFV is still lacking and its eradication solely depends on its early and accurate diagnosis. Thus, improving the available diagnostic assays and adding some validated techniques are useful for a range of serological investigations. The aim of this study was to produce and characterize p54 monoclonal antibodies with an ultimate goal of developing a monoclonal antibody-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for ASFV antibody detection. Five monoclonal antibodies against p54 protein expressed in Escherichia coli was generated and their characterizations were investigated. Furthermore, a competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (cELISA) based on a monoclonal antibody designated as 2A7 was developed. To evaluate the performance of the assay, a total of 365 pig serum samples (178 negative and 187 positive samples) were tested and a receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was applied to determine the cut-off value. Based on the ROC analysis, the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.982 (95% confidence interval: 96.9% to 99.4%), besides a sensitivity of 92.5% and a specificity of 98.9% was achieved when the percent inhibition of 20% was selected as a threshold. Moreover, the result showed an excellent agreement when compared to other commercially available blocking ELISA (kappa value = 0.912) and showed no reaction to other swine pathogens. Overall, the newly developed cELISA method offers a promising approach for a rapid and convenient ASFV serodiagnosis, which could be used as alternative to other serological assays for screening possible ASFV infection.

African Swine Fever (ASF) is a highly contagious and lethal pig disease and poses a huge threat to the pig industry worldwide. ASF virus (ASFV) encodes more than 150 different proteins, but the biological properties of most viral proteins are still unknown. ASFV CP312R protein has been proven to be one of the most immunogenic proteins during ASFV infection in pigs; however, its specific epitopes have yet to be identified. In this study, we verified the immunogenicity of CP312R protein in the sera from attenuated ASFV-inoculated pigs. We generated seven anti-ASFV CP312R mouse monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) from mice immunized with recombinant CP312R protein (rCP312R). All seven mAbs are the IgG2b-Kappa isotype and specifically interacted with the CP312R protein expressed in various cells that were infected by ASFVs or transfected with plasmid CP312R. The epitope mapping was performed by using these characterized mAbs and the peptide scanning (Pepscan) method followed by Western blot. As a result, two antigenic determinant regions were identified: two of the seven mAbs recognized the ¹²²KNEQGEEIYP¹³¹ amino acids, and the remaining five mAbs recognized the ⁷⁸DEEVIRMNAE⁸⁷ amino acids of the CP312R protein. These antigenic determinants of CP312R are conserved in different ASFV strains of seven genotypes. By using the characterized mAb, confocal microscopy observation revealed that the CP312R was mainly localized in the cytoplasm and, to some extent, in nuclei and on the nuclear membrane of infected host cells. In summary, our results benefit our understanding on the antigenic regions of ASFV CP312R and help to develop better serological diagnosis of ASF and vaccine research.

Journal of Dairy & Veterinary sciences is a part of the Juniper publishers which publishes subject-specific articles in the field of Dairy

A cross sectional study was conducted on 100 representative people, selected using random sampling technique, in Mirab Abaya Woreda, Southern Ethiopia from December 2017 to June 2017 to investigate the major meat sources, consumption pattern/frequency, importance and challenges of meat consumption in the study area. A semi structured questionnaire survey method was applied to achieves these objectives. The study was showed that all the respondents, 100%, were consumed meat. Among the meat consumed, beef was the most popular one and consumed about 65 % and this followed by chevon and mutton, 18% and 17% respectively. The majority of the respondents’ frequency of meat consumption was once per a month, 72% and few of them consume meat one per a week, 19% and only during the holiday time, 9%. Out of the total respondents, most of the respondents, 86%, replied that their consumption meat purchased from hotel, restaurant, butchery and abattoir whereas some of the respondents were obtained meat for consumption direct from market purchased and fattened in individual house animals slaughtered, 10% and 4% respectively. The respondents were had awareness for the meat importance; most of them they replied that meat could use for disease prevention (46%) and body building (19%) whereas some of them thought for give strength (13%), as source of energy (11%) and protein (9%) and because of its part of holiday (2%). Both the raw and cooked meat eating habit was the dominant (75%) and followed by cooked (21%) and raw (4%) meat eating habit in the study area. But, the challenges of meat availability for consumption were low income capacity (52%), less meat quality (14%) and Cost/high price (13%), health problem due to increase body fat (10%), fasting (7%) and supply shortage (4%). All the respondents were preserved the consume meat to prevent the meat spoilage through different methods, but the principal preservation method was dry salt preservation, 65%. In conclusion, this study identified that the low frequency of meat consumption, the presence of raw meat consumption, better understanding of meat importance and low income of the respondents was considered as the principal challenge of meat availability for consumption. Based on this conclusion, this study recommended that the meat consumption pattern or frequency and awareness raise on zoonotic disease transmission via raw or undercooked meat should be improved in the studied area. 2. Keywords: Beef; Chevon; Consumption Pattern; Mirab Abaya; Mutton; Preference

Journal of Archives on Veterinary Science and Technology is an open-access peer-reviewed journal that publishes high-quality articles, covering all major areas of Veterinary Science and Technology.