Chinese scientists see African classical swine fever virus clearly for the first time. It is a "big guy".

Since the first case of African swine fever occurred in August last year, China's pig breeding market has been greatly impacted. The scale of pig farming in many areas has been greatly reduced this year, resulting in a rise in pork prices. Recently, the scientific research team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences have analyzed the molecular structure of the live pig virus prevalent in China, which has had an important impact on the prevention and control of classical swine fever virus. The following article comes from QQ.com.

China is a big country in pig production and consumption, and the number of live pigs accounts for about half of the world. However, "African swine fever" is a nightmare for many farmers. Since the Information Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and villages reported the first epidemic in China on August 3 last year, it has caused economic losses of more than 100 billion yuan.

On October 18, good news came, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced that Chinese scientists had resolved for the first time the fine three-dimensional structure of African classical swine fever virus particles that are troubling countries. This achievement will have an important impact on promoting the prevention and control of classical swine fever in Africa.

In the early morning of October 18, the joint research team's paper on "the structure and assembly mechanism of African classical swine fever virus" was published in the international academic journal Science.

African classical swine fever virus is a "big guy"

The first outbreak of African classical swine fever broke out in China in August 2018. This is the first time that African classical swine fever virus has entered China since it was discovered in Kenya in 1921. The epidemic has had a serious impact on the pig farming industry and pork prices, causing losses of more than 100 billion yuan.

After the outbreak of classical swine fever in Africa, the teams of Rao Zihe and Wang Xiangxi of Institute of Biophysics of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Bu Zhigao of Harbin Veterinary Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences joined forces with Shanghai University of Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Institute of Microbiology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan virus Institute, Nankai University and other units, starting in December 2018. Joint research on African classical swine fever virus particles and related antigen molecules has been carried out in many aspects, such as basic scientific research, clinical detection and high-efficiency vaccine.

According to the research team, African classical swine fever is a difficult problem in the world, and the scientific community does not know what the life cycle of the virus is, nor the immune mechanism it causes, nor how many proteins it has. I don't even know how it invades or replicates.

This time, they successfully isolated the epidemic strain of African classical swine fever virus that is breaking out in China. They found that the African classical swine fever virus was on a "huge scale".

Since 2013, the research team has analyzed the atomic resolution structures of more than 30 whole viruses in four categories. From the structural comparison, we can see that African classical swine fever virus is a very large and complex pathogen.

African classical swine fever virus (CSFV) is a very large and complex pathogen among the atomic resolution structures of more than 30 kinds of viruses analyzed by the team since 2013. This poses a great challenge to data collection. The research team collected huge amounts of data for four months in a row.

Finally, they analyzed the three-dimensional structure of the whole particles of African classical swine fever virus for the first time by using the method of single particle three-dimensional reconstruction, and clarified the unique five-layer structure of African classical swine fever virus. The virus particles contain more than 30,000 protein subunits. the spherical particles with a diameter of about 260 nm are the largest virus particles to analyze the near-atomic resolution structure.

5-layer section view of the overall structure of African classical swine fever virus

The overall structure of the capsid layer of African classical swine fever virus

Feng Zhongwu, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that since the beginning of this year, pig production has declined sharply compared with last year, and the study is "in response to the needs of the country and the urgent needs of the country."

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