Detection of shrimp hemocyte iridescent virus by recombinase polymerase amplification assay

Shrimp hemocyte iridescent virus (SHIV), which was first identified in white leg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) in China in 2014, can cause extensive shrimp mortality and major economic losses in the shrimp farming industry in China. In this study, a novel real-time isothermal recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) assay was developed using a TwistAmp exo kit for SHIV detection. First, five primers and a probe were designed for the major capsid protein gene (GenBank: KY681039.1) according to the TwistDx manual; next, the optimal primers were selected by a comparison experiment. The primers and probe were specific for SHIV and did not react with shrimp white spot syndrome virus (WSSV), shrimp infectious hypodermal and hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHHNV), shrimp enterocytozoon hepatopenaei (EHP), and macrobrachium rosenbergii nodavirus (MrNV) samples, as well as pathogens of acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND). The RPA assay reached a detection limit of 11 copies per reaction according to probit regression analysis. In addition, RPA assay detected the positive plasmid samples at concentration of 1000 copies/μL within 16.04 ± 0.72 min at a single low operation temperature (39 °C). The results proved that the proposed RPA method was an accurate, sensitive, affordable, and rapid detection tool that can be suitably applied for the diagnosis of SHIV in field conditions and in resource-poor settings.