Mapping of porcine parvovirus DNA and development of a diagnostic DNA probe

Dimeric and monomeric replicative forms of DNA of porcine parvovirus (PPV) strain NADL-2 were isolated and examined by restriction enzyme analysis and reciprocal Southern blot hybridization during development of a DNA probe for PPV. Genomic single stranded PPV DNA was 5.0 kb long, and results substantiated the rolling-hairpin model of parvovirus DNA replication with the primer sequence located in the 3' terminal hairpin loop. An additional finding was the generation of a 4.7 kb species of viral DNA which was considered to be a 0.3 kb deletion variant of genomic PPV DNA. A 3.0 kb DNA fragment obtained by Pst I/Hind III digestion of monomer replicative form DNA was cloned into a plasmid vector, pUC 19. The cloned fragment, recovered from transformed Escherichia coli strain TB1 and labelled with [32P] dCTP, was evaluated by dot hybridization as a probe for PPV in infected cell cultures. The probe was specific for PPV infected cells, and was 100 times more sensitive than the standard hemagglutination test.