Molecular Characteristics and Expression of Structural Protein Gene of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Type Asia1

Variations in the amino acid sequence of Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) structural proteins are the molecular basis for the antigen diversity of the virus. Majority of antigenic sites for the virus neutralization are present on VP1, the major immunogenic protein. However, a few conformational epitopes are present on the structural proteins VP2 and VP3. The nucleotide sequence encoding all four structural proteins(P1 region) of FMDV type Asia1 YNBS/58 was determined. The P1 region of type Asia1 YNBS/58 is 2199 bp in length and codes for a polypeptide of 733 amino acids. The structural protein of vp4,vp2,vp3 and vp1 gene consists of 255,657,654,633 bp respectively. The nucleotide sequence identity of p1 gene between YNBS/58 and Ind63/72, Pka3/54, Israel, China/99, C1/Germany, A22, ZIM7/83/2 strains is 88.4%,86.0%,89.3%,68.6%,67.6%,66.8% and 50.3%, and the amino acid identity is 94.1%,93.2%,95.1%,79.9%,77.0%,76.5%,58.1%. The variations are unequally distributed among the four structural proteins of YNBS/58