A Highly Divergent Antigenic Site of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Retains Its Immunodominance

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Abstract
The ability of a highly divergent antigenic site of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) of serotype C to elicit neutralizing antibodies has been evaluated in mice and rabbits. The viruses compared, FMDV C-S8c1 and HR, differ in a single amino acid replacement in their capsid proteins, but represent two extreme antigenic specificities of the major antigenic site A of FMDV type C. Both, studies of cross-neutralization of homologous and heterologous virus, and fractionation of site A-specific antibodies by immunoaffinity chromatography suggest a similar immunodominance of antigenic site A in FMDV C-S8c1 and variant HR. This information is relevant to the formulation of synthetic peptide vaccines that ideally should consist of mixtures of peptides representing several antigenic specificities. These cocktail formulations may be required to control diseases caused by FMDV and, generally, by highly variable RNA viruses, since single specificity peptides may trigger selection of vaccine-escape viral mutants.