PARTIAL CHARACTERIZATION OF PRINCIPAL SOLUBLE-ANTIGENS ASSOCIATED WITH CORONAVIRUS OF TRANSMISSIBLE GASTROENTERITIS BY COMPLEMENT-FIXATION AND IMMUNODIFFUSION

A microtiter complement fixation (CF) test to detect transmissible gastroenteritis (TGE) viral antigen was developed, using TGE hyperimmune pig serum as an antibody source. Sera from TGE convalescent pigs did not fix complement by this test. Maximal virus and soluble antigen (SA) titers were obtained 36-48 h after inoculation of swine testes cells. Cell-associated virus and SA titers were higher than those in the culture fluid, which had to be concentrated 20.times. before use as antigen in agar immunodiffusion tests (ID). By sucrose density-gradient centrifugation, the SA had a buoyant density of 1.10 g/ml and could be separated from the virus that banded in the 1.19-g/ml region. Virus and SA from 3 different isolates of TGE had the same buoyant densities. Heating and proteolytic enzyme digestion established the protein nature of the SA. As assayed by CF and ID, there were stability differences between crude and purified preparations of SA. Antibody prepared in rabbits against the SA neutralized the TGE virus.