The white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) is one of the deadly pathogens of penaeid shrimps and other crustaceans. The WSSV virion consists of an enveloped rod-shaped nucleocapsid enclosing a large circular double stranded DNA genome of 305 Kb with 181 open reading frames. The two major structural genes, VP19 and VP28 were amplified from the genomic DNA of Chinese isolate of WSSV and cloned in pUCm-T vector and sub cloned in pET-30a (+) vector. The expressions of genes inE. coli (BL21) were confirmed by SDS-PAGE analysis. The clones were sequenced, submitted to the gene bank and the Xiang Shan strain of WSSV were compared with the previous reported sequence of WSSV of various regions which revealed that VP19 and VP28 gene sequences had certain differences from the sequences of similar genes of the isolate already reported. The recombinant proteins expressed, purified and characterized.
Keywords: Shrimp; VP19; VP28; White spot syndrome Virus.