1Department of Animal Biotechnology, College of Veterinary Sciences, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar-125 004, Haryana, India
2University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lazare Research Building, 470E, 364 Plantation Street, Lake Ave. North, Worcester, MA 01655, USA
*Corresponding author; E-mail: gaya@hau.ernet.in or rckovi@yahoo.com; Tel: +91-1662-289132 (Off.), 91-1662-235508 (Res.), Fax: +91-1662-234952
Bluetongue (BT) is an insect-borne, economically important viral disease of ruminants, prevalent in most parts of the world. At present, the diagnosis of 6T in India is based on conventional immunological and virological methods, which are cumbersome and less sensitive due to theirinherent disadvantages and the multiplicity of BTV serotypes. In the present study, a moleculardiagnostic method, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-FCR) targeting genome segment 6 and 7 which encode serogroup specific viral proteins NS1 and VP7 of BTV was developed. The RT-PCR assays were evaluated using eight different Indian isolates of BTV belonging to three most prevalent serotypes, BTV-1, BTV-18 and BTV-23. The primers specific to conserved region of these genome segments successfully amplified the expected size amplicons in all the different Indian isolates and the spiked blood and semen samples. This showed that the NS1 and VP7 gene based RT-PCR assay was specific for rapid, reliable and unambiguous detection of BTV from a variety of biological samples.
Bluetongue virus, RT-PCR, serogroup, NS1, VP7
