Comparison of Pathogenicity-Related Genes in the Current Pseudorabies Virus Outbreak in China

There is currently a pandemic of pseudorabies virus (PRV) variant strains in China. Despite extensive research on PRV variant strains in the past two years, few studies have investigated PRV pathogenicity-related genes. To determine which gene(s) is/are linked to PRV virulence, ten putative virulence genes were knocked out using clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 technology. The pathogenicity of these mutants was evaluated in a mouse model. Our results demonstrated that of the ten tested genes, the thymidine kinase (TK) and glycoprotein M (gM) knockout mutants displayed significantly reduced virulence. However, mutants of other putative virulence genes, such as glycoprotein E (gE), glycoprotein I (gI), Us2, Us9, Us3, glycoprotein G (gG), glycoprotein N (gN) and early protein 0 (EP0), did not exhibit significantly reduced virulence compared to that of the wild-type PRV. To our knowledge, this study is the first to compare virulence genes from the current pandemic PRV variant strain. This study will provide a valuable reference for scientists to design effective live attenuated vaccines in the future.