Strong sequence conservation of African swine fever virus p72 protein provides the molecular basis for its antigenic stability

The major capsid protein p72 of African swine fever virus (ASFV) has long been considered an important immunodominant antigen for serologic diagnosis. Here we describe the cloning and sequence analysis of two p72-coding genes from ASFV strains Uganda (UGA) and Dominican Republic-2 (DR2). Sequence comparison of these genes, together with those from two other ASFV strains (BA71V and E70), demonstrated that the p72 proteins are highly conserved (97.8% to 100% amino acid sequence identity) in strains isolated from different parts of the world. These results support previous observations indicating that p72 is antigenically stable, and provide a useful molecular basis for further development of ASFV serologic tests using this important antigenic molecule.