key: cord-0836536-ylicfiii
authors: Wu, X.H.; Yao, Z.Q.; Zhao, Q.Q.; Chen, S.; Hu, Z.Z.; Xie, Z.; Chen, L.Y.; Ji, J.; Chen, F.; Zhang, X.H.; Xie, Q.M.
title: Development and application of a reverse-transcription recombinase-aided amplification assay for subgroup J Avian leukosis virus
date: 2022-01-21
journal: Poult Sci
DOI: 10.1016/j.psj.2022.101743
sha: 671f14e473bc85b57fe174e98dfc15d4f6c5c108
doc_id: 836536
cord_uid: ylicfiii

Subgroup J Avian leukosis virus (ALV-J) is an important pathogen of poultry tumor diseases. Since its discovery, it has caused significant economic losses to the poultry industry. Thus, the rapid detection of molecular level with strong specificity is particularly important whether poultry are infected with ALV-J. In this study, we designed primers and probe for real-time fluorescent reverse-transcription recombinase-aided amplification assay (RT-RAA) based on the ALV-J gp85 sequence. We had established a real-time fluorescent RT-RAA method and confirmed this system by verifying the specificity and sensitivity of the primers and probe. In addition, repeatability tests and clinical sample regression tests were used for preliminary evaluation of this detection method. The sensitivity of established method was about 10(1) copies/μL, and the repeatability of the CV of the C(T) value is 4%, indicating repeatability is good. Moreover, there was no cross-reactivity with NDV, IBV, IBDV, H9N2, MDV, and REV, and other avian leukosis virus subgroups, such as subgroups A, B, C, D, K and E. Importantly, the real-time fluorescent RT-RAA completed the test within 30 min at a constant temperature of 41°C. Forty-two clinical samples with known background were tested, and the test results were coincided with 100%. Overall, these results suggested that the real-time fluorescent RT-RAA developed in this study had strong specificity, high sensitivity, and good feasibility. The method is simple, easy, and portable, that is suitable for clinical and laboratory diagnosis, and provides technical support for the prevention and control of ALV-J.

Avian leukemia (AL) caused by the avian leukosis virus (ALV), belongs to the Alpharetrovirus genus of the family Retroviridae (Crittenden, 1981; Bai et al., 1995) . AL is a type of neoplastic disease, mainly caused by the proliferation of hematopoietic cells such as lymphocytic AL. Depending on the transmission mode, ALV can be classified as endogenous and exogenous virus (Crittenden, 1981) . According to the host range, viral envelope interference, and cross-neutralization mode of ALV, exogenous ALVs can be further divided into 11 different subgroups, including subgroup A, B, C, D, J, and K from chicken (Payne, 1998; Venugopal, 1999) . ALV-J has the strongest pathogenicity and transmission ability in ALV (Li et al., 2017) . ALV-J was first detected in broiler flocks in China in 1999 (Spencer et al., 2000) . Subsequently, there were cases of ALV-J infection and tumors in commercial laying hens and local chickens in 2004 (Xu et al., 2004; Sun et al., 2007) . Moreover, the outbreak of ALV-J caused serious economic losses to the poultry industry, leading to bankruptcy of some hen farms after 2008 (Lai et al., 2011; Mao et al., 2020) . Currently, there is no effective vaccine 1 for AL. China's prevention and treatment of AL is mainly based on an eradication plan to achieve the effect of purification. Fortunately, the outbreak of AL in commercial broilers and laying hens has decreased since 2013 . Previous study analyzed the molecular characteristics and epidemic trend of ALV-J in Chinese native chickens from 2013 to 2018, showing that ALV-J gp85 and U3 of native chicken isolates had formed a unique local chicken branch, and gene deletion in the 3 0 UTR region was a unique molecular feature of ALV-J in China (Ma et al., 2020) . It had been reported that the outbreak of ALV-J in white-feathered broilers in parts of the Jiangxi province of China had occurred again since the end of 2018 . According to their results, they have shown that the new mutant ALV-J was being bred in local chickens.

Detection is a particularly important part of the AL eradication plan. The current methods for detecting ALV mainly include virus isolation, ELISA, conventional PCR, real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR (qPCR), immunofluorescence test (IFA), and Loopmediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). We all known the virus isolation is the gold standard for detected ALV. However, culturing CEF or DF-1 cells requires more than 7 d to obtain final accurate results, and other methods such as ELISA (Yun et al., 2013) need to assist, but cannot distinguish subgroups (Garc et al., 2003) . Conventional PCR, qPCR, and IFA can be used to distinguish subgroups but require expensive and complex equipment such as quantitative PCR fluorescent machines and fluorescent microscopes, which were suitable for laboratory diagnosis (Smith et al., 1998; Bagust et al., 2004; Li et al., 2012; Qin et al., 2013; Gao et al., 2014; Chen et al., 2018) . LAMP detection had applications in clinical, but it required 63°C reactions in a water bath or incubator, which was limited in the field (Zhang et al., 2010) . However, the reverse-transcription recombinase aided amplification assay (RT-RAA) is a constant temperature nucleic acid amplification technology. The RAA and recombinase polymerase amplification assay (RPA) have similar amplification principles. The difference between the two is the source of recombinase. The RPA recombinase is derived from Phage T4, and the RAA recombinase is derived from bacteria or fungus. In recent years, RAA technology can be applied to human diseases, pets, aquatic, poultry infectious diseases, genetic diseases, etc. For example, Xue and Wang both reported applications on the COVID-19 Xue et al., 2020) . Fan reported on the clinical testing of African swine fever virus (Fan et al., 2020) . The RAA principle is that the recombinase and primers formed a complex of recombinase and primers at a constant temperature of 35 to 42°C and invades the DNA double-stranded nucleic acid template. At the invading site, the recombinase will open the double-stranded DNA, while the singlestranded binding protein maintains the double-stranded template in an open-stranded state. Next, the DNA polymerase binds to the 3 0 end of the primer and begins to synthesize a new strand. The subsequent amplified product can be used as a template again, so that it was repeated continuously to complete the amplification of the target gene (Guo et al., 2020; . Overall, the RT-RAA method has some advantages, like high sensitivity, strong specificity, short detection time, simple operation, no expensive instruments. If combined with fluorescent probes, real-time detection and rapid on-site detection can be achieved.

The proviral DNA of the ALV genome is arranged as 5 0 LTR-leader-gag-pol-env-3 0 LTR, with a total length of 7,200 bp to 7,800 bp . According to the low homology rate between the sequence of ALV-J gp85 and other exogenous subgroups (Bova et al., 1988; Bai et al, 1995) , primers and probes can be designed on the sequence of gp85 to distinguish the subgroups of ALV (Venugopal, 1999) . In this study, we designed the RT-RAA primers and probes according to the ALV-J gp85 gene sequence, and established the real-time fluorescent RT-RAA isothermal amplification detection method for ALV-J. (Table 1) were designed. The amplified fragment was 148 bp. The primers and probe were synthesized by the Sangon Biotech Co., Ltd.

The plasmid standard was constructed based on the RT-TAA primer designed fragment of the ALV-J gp85 gene sequence (the gp85 reference strain SCAU1903, GenBank accession number MT175600.1). The primer sequence was quoted from this paper which published by Wang in 2018 (Table 2) . A 545 bp fragment of the gp85 gene was cloned into the PMD19-T vector to quantify DNA copy number. After the plasmid successfully constructing, the plasmid concentration measured by the ultra-micro nucleic acid analyzer was about 20.229 ng/mL, and the copy number of the plasmid was about 5.70 £ 10 9 copies/mL calculated by the formula.

In order to verify the fragment amplified by RT-RAA primers, the template was the nucleic acid of ALV-J SCAU1903 strain, PCR reaction system: JF forward (10 mM) 1.0 mL, JR reverse (10 mM) 1.0 mL, ddH 2 O 6.0 mL, 2 £ Es Taq MasterMix 10.0 mL, proviral DNA 2 mL. The reaction procedure was: 95°C 3 min, 95°C 30 s, 58°C 30 s, 72°C 30 s, 35 cycles, 72°C extension for 2 min. Finally, the obtained product was analyzed by 1% agarose gel electrophoresis.

Preparation of the real-time RT-RAA reaction system: Each test sample corresponds to a RT-RAA Freeze-dried powder tube (single-stranded DNA-binding protein, DNA polymerase, recombinase, MLV reverse transcriptase, ATP, dNTP mix). The reaction components in each RT-RAA reaction tube and the volume were shown in Table 3 . After preparing the reaction system as described above, we flicked the bottom of the tube to expel the bubbles and centrifuged at low speed for 10 s. The amplification temperature of the real-time RT-RAA reaction system was selected to 41°C, so the amplification protocol of the system was 41°C 60s, 41°C 30s, 40 cycles, and the fluorescence signal was collected. After the reaction, the positive control had a typical amplification curve, and the peak time was ≤19.5 min (Ct value ≤39); and the negative control has no amplification curve appeared, or the peak time was >19.5 min (Ct value >39), indicating valid results.

Diluting the prepared plasmid in a 10-fold ratio. We used 5 concentration gradients as templates, which were 1 £ 10 5 , 1 £ 10 4 , 1 £ 10 3 , 1 £ 10 2 and 1 £ 10 1 copies/mL. And then 5 mL plasmid in different diluted concentrations as the template that performed the real-time RT-RAA amplification according to the optimized reaction conditions described above.

Using ALV-J nucleic acid as a positive control and ddH 2 O as a negative control. Five uL template of ALV-A, ALV-B, ALV-C, ALV-D, ALV-K, ALV-E, NDV, IBV, IBDV, H9N2, MDV, and REV was respectively taken to detect the specificity and performed the realtime RT-RAA amplification according to the above optimized reaction conditions RT-RAA amplification.

In order to verify the reproducibility of the method, the optimized reaction system was used for 3 times repeated detections with ALV-J nucleic acid, and ddH 2 O was used as a negative control.

Real-time fluorescent RT-RAA detection was performed on the nucleic acids of the above 42 clinical samples, and the results were compared with known results. Among them, 13 were positive samples and 29 were negative samples.

With ALV-J SCAU1903 nucleic acid as a positive control and ddH 2 O as a negative control, PCR amplification was performed on the designed RT-RAA primer pair. The result was shown in Figure 1 . The target amplified fragment was consistent with the expected result, with a 

In order to determine the most suitable reaction temperature for the primers and probe, the temperature gradient was explored between 39°C and 42°C. The results showed that at 41°C, the primers and probe listed in Table 1 can reach their fluorescence intensity in the shortest time. Therefore, it was determined that the optimal reaction temperature of the RT-RAA method established in this study was 41°C. The optimal reaction conditions for RT-RAA were: JF-Primer (10 mM) 2.0 mL, JR-Primer (10 mM) 2.0 mL, JP-Probe (10 mM) 0.6 mL, A Buffer 40.9 mL, B Buffer 2.5 mL, RNA 5 mL, and total 50 mL system.

The result of sensitivity analysis of ALV-J real-time RT-RAA assay was shown in Figure 2 . When the plasmid concentration was 1 £ 10 1 copies/mL, there was still fluorescence signal that was, the lowest detection line of this method was 1 £ 10 1 copies/mL.

The results of specificity analysis of ALV-J real-time RT-RAA assay were shown in Figure 3 . The positive control ALV-J nucleic acid had a fluorescent signal, the negative control ddH 2 O and the nucleic acid of other viruses had no fluorescent signal. It shows that the established real-time RT-RAA method can distinguish ALV-A, ALV-B, ALV-C, ALV-D, ALV-K, ALV-E, NDV, IBV, IBDV, H9N2, MDV, and REV, and specifically detect ALV-J.

The results of repeatability analysis of ALV-J realtime RT-RAA assay were shown in Figure 4 . The results showed that the amplification reaction peak time was the same, the curve shape was similar, the negative control has no amplification, the CV of the C T value was 4%, indicating good repeatability.

The results of evaluation of the RT-RAA assay using avian clinical samples were shown in Table 4 . The result of real-time fluorescent RT-RAA test result was 100% coincident with the negative and positive results of 42 samples with known background, of which the positive rate was 31% and the negative rate was 69%. The test results reveal that the real-time fluorescent RT-RAA has good consistency.

Since the discovery of ALV, it has brought huge economic losses to the poultry industry around the world. Since China implemented the eradication plan, the outbreak of AL has decreased. However, according to the (Li et al., 2019; Zhou et al., 2019) . Studies had shown that ALV-J can be detected and isolated from commercial live vaccines, which can inhibit the immune effect of the vaccine Wang et al., 2021) . Because of the high level of vertical and horizontal transmission of ALV-J, effective vaccines and drugs were useless (Venugopal, 1999) , it was important to improve the eradication efficiency and speed up the eradication process. As the detection in the eradication plan is particularly important, therefore, it is urgent to establish a detection method that is simple to operate, fast, and low in cost.

According to research results, the ALV-J gp85 gene and other exogenous ALV subgroups only show about 40% homology (Bai et al., 1995; Smith et al., 1998) . Therefore, we designed the RT-RAA primers and probe with ALV-J gp85 gene. Through verified primers and probes experiments, there was no crossover with other subgroups (ALV-A, ALV-B, ALV-C, ALV-D, ALV-E, ALV-K) and other viruses (IBV, H9N2, REV, MDV, NDV, and IBDV), indicating that the established RT-RAA method can distinguish ALV-J from other subgroups and other viruses, and can specifically detect ALV-J. Compared with ELISA, the real-time RT-RAA can overcome the interference caused by the integration of endogenous viral nucleic acid into the host body and the false positive phenomenon.

The real-time RT-RAA had a minimum detection line of 10 1 copies/uL, which was 100 times that of the conventional PCR (Gao et al., 2014) , similar to the results of the QPCR (Dai et al., 2015) . However, the traditional PCR and qPCR were suitable for laboratory testing, but large-scale testing in the clinical field was limited. The sensitivity of the LAMP (Zhang et al., 2010) is the same, but if no paraffin oil is used, the LAMP method may have the possibility of cross-contamination.

The real-time RT-AA was compared with existing detection methods in detection time. The analysis time of traditional RT-PCR and RT-qPCR (excluding nucleic acid extraction) is more than 2 h and requires expensive equipment with high temperature and variable temperature. The detection time of ELISA is generally 2 h 30 min, and the detection samples are limited. For example, because IDEXX products are interfered by the integration of endogenous viruses in serum and egg into the host genome. It takes about a week for IFA and pathogen separation test results, expensive equipment and high requirements for test personnel. The time of LAMP detection is about 45 min and does not require expensive equipment. Nevertheless, LAMP once opened the lid and it was easily to form aerosol pollution. However, the detection time of RT-RAA is 5 to 30 min, which greatly saves the detection time and does not require heavy and expensive equipment and professionals.

In this study, we detected the clinical samples with known background to evaluate the established RT-RAA method. Among the 42 samples detected, 13 positive samples had a positive rate of 31%, and 29 negative samples had a negative rate of 69%, which was consistent with the known background results. The ALV-J nucleic acid was repeated 3 times, and the CV of the C T value was 4%, indicating that the method established in this test has good sensitivity and repeatability.

Overall, the real-time RT-RAA we established can complete the detection within 30 min at a constant temperature of 41°C, which has high sensitivity, good repeatability, and strong specificity. It needs only simple equipment to complete the detection quickly. Trial and clinical sample testing have shown that the RT-RAA detection method is practical in laboratory and clinical diagnosis. In addition, this real-time RT-RAA is helpful for epidemiological surveillance and disease detection that may develop into a clinical detection program for ALV-J in the poultry industry. Abbreviations: ALV-J, J Avian leukosis virus; RT-RAA, reverse-transcription recombinase-aided amplification assay.

The avian retrovirus env gene family: molecular analysis of host range and antigenic variants

Detection of subgroup J avian leukosis virus infection in Australian meat-type chickens

Sequence of host-range determinants in the env gene of a full-length, infectious proviral clone of exogenous avian leukosis virus HPRS-103 confirms that it represents a new subgroup (designated J)

Corrigendum to "Development and application of a SYBR green real-time PCR for detection of the emerging avian leukosis subgroup

Exogenous and endogenous leukosis virus genes−a review

Development and application of SYBR Green I real-time PCR assay for the separate detection of subgroup J Avian leukosis virus and multiplex detection of avian leukosis virus subgroups A and B

Systematic identification of host immune key factors influencing viral infection in PBL of ALV-J infected SPF chicken

Clinical validation of two recombinase-based isothermal amplification assays (RPA/RAA) for the rapid detection of African swine fever virus

Development and application of a multiplex PCR method for rapid differential detection of subgroup A, B, and J avian leukosis viruses

Development and application of reverse transcriptase nested polymerase chain reaction test for the detection of exogenous avian leukosis virus

SARS-CoV-2 detection with CRISPR diagnostics

Isolation and characterization of emerging subgroup J avian leukosis virus associated with hemangioma in egg-type chickens

Diversity of Avian leukosis virus subgroup

The emergence of the infection of subgroup J avian leucosis virus escalated the tumour incidence in commercial yellow chickens in Southern China in recent years

The ALV-A/B specific antibodies correlation between ELISA and IFA detection in chicken serum

Vertical transmission of avian leukosis virus subgroup J (ALV-J) from hens infected through artificial insemination with ALV-J infected semen

Molecular characterization of avian leukosis virus subgroup J in Chinese local chickens between

Avian leukosis virus contamination in live vaccines: a retrospective investigation in China

HPRS-103: a retro virus strikes back. The emergence of subgroup J avian leukosis virus

Development and application of real-time PCR for detection of subgroup J avian leukosis virus

Development and application of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for the detection of subgroup J avian leukosis virus

Relationship between egg size and subgroup J avian leukosis virus in eggs from broiler breeders

Epidemiological and pathological studies of subgroup J avian leukosis virus infections in Chinese local "yellow" chickens

Avian leukosis virus subgroup J: a rapidly evolving group of oncogenic retroviruses

Multiple-centre clinical evaluation of an ultrafast single-tube assay for SARS-CoV-2 RNA

Full-length genome sequence analysis of an avian leukosis virus subgroup J (ALV-J) as contaminant in live poultry vaccine: the commercial live vaccines might be a potential route for ALV-J transmission

ALV-J-contaminated commercial live vaccines induced pathogenicity in three-yellow chickens: one of the transmission routes of ALV-J to commercial chickens

Diversity and evolution analysis of glycoprotein GP85 from avian leukosis virus subgroup J isolates from chickens of different genetic backgrounds during 1989-2016: coexistence of five extremely different clusters

Reverse-transcription recombinase-aided amplification assay for H7 subtype avian influenza virus

Occurrence of avian leukosis virus subgroup J in commercial layer flocks in China

Reverse-transcription recombinase-aided amplification assay for rapid detection of the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)

Development of an antigen-capture ELISA for the detection of avian leukosis virus p27 antigen

Development of a loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay for rapid detection of subgroup J avian leukosis virus

Outbreak of myelocytomatosis caused by mutational avian leukosis virus subgroup

We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript entitled.