Pathotyping of Newcastle disease virus with a filamentous bacteriophage

A filamentous phage bearing the peptide sequence TLTTKLY was isolated from a heptapeptide phage display library against a velogenic Newcastle disease virus (NDV). In order to investigate the potential of this specific phage as an immunological reagent in virus pathotyping, an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based method was developed. This method can differentiate the velogenic strains from the mesogenic and lentogenic strains. An equilibrium-binding assay in solution showed that the interactions between the phage and all the NDV strains gave rise to two widely differing dissociation constants (Kdrel). Based upon the first Kdrel values, NDV strains can be classified into two groups; the first comprises the velogenic strains, and the second consists of the mesogenic and lentogenic strains. These results indicate a high degree of correlation between the binding affinities and pathotyping of NDV strains using the TLTTKLY phage.