[Epitope mapping of antigenic determinants of E2 glycoprotein from classical swine fever virus using synthetic...

Epitope mapping of the major envelope glycoprotein E2 of classical swine fever virus (CSFV) is important for our understanding of E2 and also for development of the CSFV-specific diagnostic assays and epitope- or peptide-based marker vaccines. Previous competitive binding studies showed that monoclonal antibodies raised against E2 protein of CSFV detected 8 individual epitopes. At the present study using a set of synthetic peptides covering the full sequences of E2 glycoprotein five linear non-overlap B-cells epitopes were identified. The identified sequences of 12 strains of the CSFV and 5 other pestiviruses were aligned. The data obtained could be useful for improvement of the CSFV diagnostic systems and studies of amino acid substitutions and their influence on antigenic properties of the CSFV E2 protein.