Isolation by high-performance liquid chromatography and partial characterization of a 57,000-dalton herpes simplex virus type 1 polypeptide

A sensitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for the detection of herpes simplex virus antigens

A sandwich ELISA for the detection of herpes simplex virus (HSV) antigens was developed using sheep anti-HSV F(ab')2 fragments for capture and an indirect antibody system for detection. Current detection limits are 0.5 ng protein for HSV1 and 1.5 ng protein for HSV2. This compares to a single HSV1-infected Vero-cell in a background of 10(6) non-infected cells or 10 plaque forming units (PFU) of HSV1 in culture supernatants as determined in separate experiments. Limiting dilution experiments show that one PFU of HSV1 can be detected after overnight culture in both supernatant and cell extracts. The use of F(ab')2 for capture completely eliminated binding of Staphylococcus aureus. No cross-reactivity was observed with other human herpes viruses. When evaluated with 245 random 'left-overs' of genital swab specimens in transport medium the test showed a sensitivity and specificity of 77.2 and 97.8%, respectively, with respect to virus isolation in culture. In a preliminary study on 16 direct ELISA swab-specimens extracted in 0.5 ml ELISA sample buffer both sensitivity and specificity were 100% with respect to culture. In both clinical series there was a proportional relationship between the ELISA value and the estimated amount of infectious virus in the specimen.

Size-exclusion high-performance liquid chromatography of Sendai virus membrane proteins in different detergents. A comparison of different columns

Four column packings for size-exclusion high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) of proteins with particle sizes from 3 to 13 micron were compared, using 0.1% sodium dodecyl sulphate in the solvent. Their suitability for the purification of hydrophobic membrane proteins was studied with Sendai virus proteins as a model. The calibration curves of the two 13-micron column packings were linear up to high molecular weights. In contrast to this, large proteins (greater than 100-150 kD) were eluted later than expected from the 3- and 6-micron packings. Peak capacities for proteins larger than 20 kD ranged from 4.7 to 5.5. Therefore, purification of complex mixtures of membrane proteins will often require rechromatography by a different mode of HPLC. Non-ionic detergents are suitable for further ion-exchange chromatography. The effect of addition of 0.1% of five non-ionic detergents (three gluco-methylalkanamide detergents, octylglucoside, and decyl-polyethyleneglycol-300) to the solvent was investigated and decyl-polyethyleneglycol-300 was found to be most suitable. Size-exclusion HPLC with this detergent resulted in the separation of micelles of three different sizes, of which the larger two contained exclusively the Sendai virus F protein.

Nucleotide sequence and predicted amino acid sequence of a protein encoded in a small herpes simplex virus DNA fragment capable of trans-inducing alpha genes

The five alpha genes of herpes simplex virus 1 are the first set of genes to be expressed after infection. Previous studies have shown that alpha genes resident in eukaryotic cells are induced by infection with herpes simplex virus 1 or 2 but not by other herpesviruses and indicate that the alpha trans-inducing factor was a structural component of the virion. This factor induces genes linked to a bona fide promoter and containing at the 5' end a small sequence derived from the promoter-regulatory domains of alpha genes. We report the sequence of a small DNA fragment shown previously to be capable of expressing the alpha trans-inducing factor in transient expression systems. The only gene encoded in its entirety in this fragment is predicted to specify a 479 amino acid protein with a Mr of 53,053. The precise termini of the 1.74-kilobase mRNA specifying this protein were determined in our 5' and 3' S1 nuclease protection studies.