TY - JOUR T1 - Detection of Pathogenic Marek’s Disease Virus by Dot Blot Hybridization and PCR in Commercial Chickens in China AU - Ding, Jiabo AU - Chen, Ruiai AU - Guo, Kai AU - Wang, Nan AU - Gu, Jinhua JO - Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances VL - 11 IS - 22 SP - 4250 EP - 4257 PY - 2012 DA - 2001/08/19 SN - 1680-5593 DO - javaa.2012.4250.4257 UR - https://makhillpublications.co/view-article.php?doi=javaa.2012.4250.4257 KW - Detection KW -Marek`s disease virus KW -dot blot hybridization KW -PCR KW -China AB - Marek’s Disease Virus (MDV) is an oncogenic herpesvirus that causes various clinical syndromes in chickens which lead to huge economic losses for poultry industry. Compared with virulent MDV (vMDV) strains it was found that the vaccine strain CVI988 had a 5 bp deletion in the bi-directional promoter region in the genome of MDV. Based on the deletion, researchers developed a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) for the rapid identification of vMDV strains from vaccine CVI988 strain. In the present study, the sensitivity and specificity of different methods including PCR, virus isolation and dot blot hybridization for detecting MDV were compared. The results showed that PCR and dot blot hybridization assays were comparable in sensitivity to virus isolation and there were good correlations in positive results among the three techniques. In addition, the PCR assay similar with virus isolation was specific enough to identify CVI988 vaccine strain from vMDV. In company with PCR, the dot blot hybridization with the probe of pp38 gene labeled with digoxigenin were used to monitor the vMDV infection in commercial chicken flocks in China. The data demonstrated that MDV were widespread in commercial chickens in China and the combination of dot blot hybridization and PCR assay was useful for screening for wild vMDV strains infection in chickens. ER -