Construction and Immunization of Recombinants of the Structural Protein VP3 Gene of Avian Encephalomyelitis Virus

A pair of primers specific to VP3 gene was designed according to the published sequence of VP3 gene of AEV strain(1 143).VP3 fragment was amplified by PCR from prokaryotic expression vector pET-VP3.The fragment was then cloned into T-tailed vector pGEM-T easy.Sequence analysis showed that the sequence is identical to that of published VP3 gene of AEV VR strain.Then the fragment VP3 was cut from the vector pGEM-VP3 and inserted into eukaryotic expression vector pcDNA3.1(+) and transformed in Escherichia coli DH5α.The VP3 was expressed after transfected into COS-1 cell and detected by IFA.BALB/c mice was immunized with the recombinant vector pcDNAVP3 and antibodies against VP3 was detected by ELISA.