Isolation and biochemical characterization of intertypic recombinants of foot-and-mouth disease virus

Recombinants were isolated between two European serotypes (O and A) and between two of the most distantly related serotypes (O from Europe and SAT2 from Africa) using appropriate ts mutants in an infectious centre assay. The recombinants were characterised by electrofocusing of their induced proteins and by RNase-T1 fingerprinting of their RNA. The approximate location of the cross-over event in each recombinant was determined by sequencing the unique distinguishable O or A oligonucleotides and locating them within the known genome sequence. Nine different types of recombinant were identified from the two types of cross (O X A and O X SAT) and all had a single cross-over in the middle or 3' half of the genome, i.e. in the nonstructural coding region. Recombination between the most distantly related viruses (O X SAT2) appeared to occur at a lower frequency than recombination between serotypes of the same group (O X A). A higher incidence of recombinant proteins with unique pI was also observed in the O X SAT2 crosses.