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Expression of porcine interferon-α and its bioactivity analysis in vitro and in vivo

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Abstract

Interferon α (IFN-α) plays a crucial role in the host’s immune response. In this study, the amino acid sequence of porcine interferon α (PoIFN-α) was analyzed. Seven substitutions, S38F, H40Q, F43L, N78D, Y86C, S151A, and R156T, were mutated and obtained by aligning the sequences of PoIFN-α subtypes. The PoIFN-α mutants were designed, expressed, and purified in E. coli. The antiviral activities of these PoIFN-αs were measured in Vero and swine testis cells against vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). Their inhibitory abilities on pseudorabies virus (PRV) were also examined. Commercial PoIFN-α was used as a control. We found the ideal inducer concentration of isopropyl β-d-thiogalactoside was 1 mM, and the best time-point for induction was 8 h. The PoIFN-α mutant named PoIFN-α-156s had the highest antiviral activity, which was about 200-fold more than that of PoIFN-α. PoIFN-α-156s could inhibit VSV and PRV replication in a dose-dependent manner in vitro. The half-life of PoIFN-α-156s was longer than that of PoIFN-α in mice, and the effective antiviral action was higher than PoIFN-α. Animal experiments showed that PoIFN-α-156s could decrease the viral load after infection with VSV. Overall, these results suggest that recombinant PoIFN-α-156s has the ability of antivirus, and is feasible for veterinary clinical applications and fundamental research.

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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

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Funding

This study was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFD0501003).

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Author notes

  1. Pengtao Wang, Lu Xia and Xiuli Liang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The College of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, 450002, Henan, People’s Republic of China

    Pengtao Wang, Lu Xia, Fangfang Han, Haojie Ren, Yixuan Zhang & Zhanyong Wei

  2. Henan Joint International Research Laboratory of Veterinary Biologics Research and Application, Anyang Institute of Technology, Anyang, 455000, Henan, People’s Republic of China

    Xiuli Liang

  3. Key Laboratory for Animal-Derived Food Safety of Henan Province, Zhengzhou, 450002, Henan, People’s Republic of China

    Zhanyong Wei

Authors
  1. Pengtao Wang
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  2. Lu Xia
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  3. Xiuli Liang
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  4. Fangfang Han
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  5. Haojie Ren
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Contributions

ZW designed and funded the study. PW, LX, and XL performed all the experiments, analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. FH participated in conducting the experiments. HR and YZ supervised the experiment and participated in the experiment designs. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhanyong Wei.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Animal welfare and experimental procedures were performed according to the regulations and guidelines of laboratory animals of Henan Agriculture University (Zhengzhou, China).

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Wang, P., Xia, L., Liang, X. et al. Expression of porcine interferon-α and its bioactivity analysis in vitro and in vivo. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 44, 473–482 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-020-02457-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-020-02457-8

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