Construction of recombinant adenovirus expressing porcine interleukin 2 gene

To construct a recombinant adenovirus expressing porcine interleukin 2 (IL-2), The IL-2 gene was amplified by RT-PCR with specific primers from the total RNA, which were extracted from peripheral blood lymphocytes after stimulation with ConA in vitro and cloned into pIRES2-EGFP. The recombinant adenovirus shuttle plasmid pDC315-IL2-EGFP was constructed by inserting IL2-IRES-EGFP into shuttle plasmid pDC315. A recombinant adenovirus expressing IL-2 (rAd-IL-2-EGFP) was generated by co-transfecting the pDC315-IL2-EGFP and the backbone plasmid pBHGlox△E1, E3Cre in HEK293 cells. The rAd-IL2-EGFP exhibited the typical cytopathic effect of adenovirus and fluorescence expressed by EGFP gene in HEK293 cells and IL-2 expression was confirmed by western blot. Therefore, rAd-IL-2-EGFP would be useful to study the immune enhancement of the porcine IL-2 in pig.