The Senecavirus A (SVA), formerly called Seneca Valley virus (SVV) which was first isolated in the United States (US) in 2002. In this study, a SVA strain was isolated from a pig herd in Shandong Province in China and designated as SVA-CH-SDGT-2017. The full-length genome, excluding the poly (A) tail of the SVA isolates, was 7280 nucleotides long, with the genomic organization resembling and shares high nucleotide identities of 90.7% to 96.9% with other previously reported SVA isolates. To investigate the pathogenicity of the SVA isolate, experimental infections of pigs were performed. The SVA strains successfully infected the pigs, evidenced by presence of virus shedding and robust serum neutralizing antibody responses. Moreover, the contact-exposed pigs showed 100-fold reduction compared to that of inoculated group. Our findings provide useful data for studying the pathogenesis and transmission of SVA in pigs.

Phospholipase C (PLC) is a key enzyme in the cell membrane. PLC hydrolyses phosphatidylinositol 4, 5-bisphosphate (PIP2) to generateinositol 1,4, 5-triphosphate (IP3) and diacylglycerol (DAG) that regulates a variety of cellular processes. Evidence indicates the pivotal role of PLC and inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor(IP3R) in influencing Ca2+ release from the endoplasmic reticulum(ER).At the same time, the imbalance of Ca2+ will stimulate endoplasmic reticulum stress(ERS), leading to cell apoptosis. Viral infection could triggers host defense through apoptosis of the infected cells.However, it is not clear how porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) induces apoptosis by affecting Ca2+ homeostasis. We show here that PCV2 infection induces the increased cytoplasmic Ca2+ level and apoptosis.We also found that the ER swelling of PK-15 cells after viral infection by transmission electron microscopy. Furthemore, the activation of PLC-IP3R-Ca2+ signaling enhanced apoptosis in infected PK-15 cells. Taken together,our findings suggest that PCV2 infection trigger ERS of PK-15 cells via the PLC-IP3R-Ca2+ signaling pathway to promoted the release of intracellular Ca2+, and led to cell apoptosis.

Porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) is the etiological agent that primary cause of post-weaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS). The major genotypes, PCV2a, PCV2b and PCV2d, are highly prevalent, but now replaced with 2b and 2d in swine population in worldwide. Rep protein is the key protein for viral replication. Compared a large number of Rep protein amino acid (aa) sequences, we found that there were three sites with regular changes between 2b and 2d.In order to analyze the effect of key sites on viral replication, we used site-directed mutagenesis to mutate the 6th aa of Rep (alternations with asparagine and serine) between PCV2b and PCV2d, Two wild-type and two mutant viruses infectious clones were rescued by non-contaminated porcine kidney-15 (PK-15) cells. Real-time quantitative PCR and a one-step growth curve were used to determine viral load to assess the replication of rescued viruses. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the PCV2b mutation and the wild-type PCV2b virus in vitro, while the mutation ofPCV2d enhanced viral replication.