Cloning and Purification of Envelope Proteins (VP19, VP28) and Nucleocapsid Proteins (VP15, VP35) Genes of a Shrimp White Spot Syndrome Virus Isolates in Korea

White spot syndrome virus (WSSV) is the causative agent of a disease that has led to severe mortalities of cultured shrimps in Korea and many other countries. Since 1993, massive mortalities due to the viral infection have also occurred in the penaeid shrimps cultured in Korea. WSSV is a large, circular, double stranded (ds) DNA virus and an enveloped, ellipsoid virus with a rod-shaped nucleocapsid with flat ends. In order to identify the characteristics of this Korean isolate of WSSV, the genes for four virion proteins, VP15, VP19, VP28 and VP35 were cloned and their sequences were compared with the available pool of WSSV gene sequences in the GenBank/EMBL databases. From these comparisons, we confirm the occurrence of WSSV in Korea and deduce that, VP15, VP28 and VP35 genes are identically conserved among the Korean isolate and geographically different foreign isolates, but VP19 amino acid sequences of the Korean WSSV isolates changed valine of the foreign isolates into aspartate. (omitted)