Preparation of recombinant glycoprotein B (gB) of Chelonid herpesvirus 5 (ChHV5) for antibody production and its application for infection detection in sea turtles

Abstract The Chelonid herpesvirus 5 (ChHV5) infection possibly associated to the fibropapillomatosis (FP) disease in sea turtles worldwide remains largely unknown and limited studies have used serological approaches to detection of antibodies against ChHV5 in sea turtles with or without FP. We aimed to develop diagnostic platforms based on the viral glycoprotein B (gB) for ChHV5 infection. In this study, five recombinant sub-fragments of the gB protein were successfully expressed and subsequently served as antigens for both seroprevalence and antibody production. The results indicated that the five expressed proteins harbored antigenicity, shown by the results of using sera from sea turtles that were PCR-positive for ChHV5. Moreover, seropositive sea turtles were significantly associated with FP (p