Development of a quantal assay in primary shrimp cell culture for yellow head baculovirus (YBV) of penaeid shrimp.

A 50% tissue culture infectious dose assay (TCID50) using primary culture of shrimp lymphoid organ (Oka) cells was developed for the quantitative titration of yellow-head baculovirus (YBV), a newly isolated virus of penaeid shrimp. The assay protocol includes the use of Primaria-grade 96-well tissue culture plates to grow the primary lymphoid organ cells of penaeid shrimp. A 15% gill suspension from YBV-infected shrimp was determined to have an infectious virus titer of 5 x 10(5.75) TCID50/ml. This report represents the first convenient assay protocol using cell culture derived from penaeid shrimp to titer a shrimp virus.