Infectious bursal disease live vaccines: changes in the virus population during serial passage in chickens and chicken embryo fibroblast cells.

Two attenuated infectious bursal disease virus strains used as commercial live vaccine were passaged five successive times in specific-pathogen-free chickens and chicken embryo fibroblast (CEF) cells. Both attenuated strains increased in virulence during the passage in susceptible chickens as evidenced by the decrease in bursa/body weight ratios. A direct nucleotide sequence analysis of the VP2 hypervariable domain amplified by the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction revealed that the nucleotide at position 890 (T) in both strains was A after the passage in chicken. In addition, the nucleotide at position 890 (A) was T or C after the subsequent passage in CEF cells. Because of the nucleotide differences, the amino acid residue at position 253 (His) in both vaccines was Gln after the passage in chickens, and the amino acid residue Gln was changed back to His during the subsequent passage in CEF cells. The digestion of the amplified fragment with restriction endonucleases Stul and Ncol, which recognize the sequence difference at position 890, showed that the population of the virus that had amino acid Gln at position 253 was gradually increased during the passage in chickens. Conversely, the population of the virus that had amino acid His at position 253 was gradually increased during the subsequent passage in CEF cells.