Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is a member of the genus Pestivirus within the family Flaviviridae. NS3 is one of the immunodominance regions of the BVDV viral proteins. To identify the potential B-cell linear antigenic epitopes within BVDV NS3 region, serial overlapping truncations covering the whole region were expressed and purified, and screened by multistep of Western-blot. We found ((1)VCKKITEHERCHVNI(15)), ((20)AFFGVMPRGTTPRAPVR(36)), ((46)RRGLETGWAYTHQGGI(61)), ((281)EGDMATGITYASYGYFC(297)), ((426)YSGEDPANLRVVTSQSPYVVVATNAIESGV(455)) and ((481)FIVTGLKRMAVTVGEQA(497)) can be recognized by the BVDV infected bovine serum. These proteins have been confirmed by indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (I-ELISA). The results of this study might open new perspectives on the structure and antibody-antigen reaction of the non-structural proteins and may aid in the clinical application as well.
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