Production of high titered immunoreactive serum against FMDV

Currently inactivated purified foot-and mouth-disease virus of various serotypes are used to raise type specific sera, which is laborious and involves the risk of handling live virus. Alternatively immunoreactive proteins produced in heterologous host system are an unlimited source of antigen for the production of diagnostic regents. However shorter peptides elicit low antibody titred sera. Hence the present study was taken up to evaluate the immune response of a monomer and compare with that of a tetramer protein carrying immunoreactive epitopes of FMDV serotype 'O'.