Development and Application of an RT-PCR to Differentiate the Prevalent NA-PRRSV Strains in China

BACKGROUND: PRRSV features with genetic diversity and high mutation which leads to the emergence of a multiple of circulating virus strains with different virulence. North American (genotype 2) PRRSV (NA-PRRSV) can be divided into classical PRRSV (C-PRRSV), highly pathogenic PRRSV (HP-PRRSV), and NADC30-like PRRSV (NL-PRRSV) according to their genomic characteristics and pathogenicity. So far, the above three subtypes of NA-PRRSV are now circulating in China. OBJECTIVE AND METHOD: In this study, a reverse transcript polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was established to simultaneously differentiate three subtypes of NA-PRRSV. The established RT-PCR can be applied to PRRSV-infected samples originated from both supernatant of cell culture and pig tissues and showed specificity exclusively to PRRSV. The sensitivity of RT-PCR showed the minimum RNA detection was 0.04ng/µl. RESULT AND CONCLUSION: The established RT-PCR was next used to differentiate the subtypes of 29 NA-PRRSV isolated in 2016 and the results showed that HP-PRRSV is still the dominant circulating virus strain in the presence of NADC30-like PRRSV in Henan province.