Cloning and sequence analysis of the Korean strain of spike gene of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus and expression of its neutralizing epitope in plants

Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) causes acute diarrhea and dehydration in pigs and leads to death with a high mortality rate, which has been reported notably in Korea. The spike (S) gene of the PEDV isolated in Korea was cloned and sequenced. The nucleotide sequence encoding the entire S gene open reading frame of Korean strain was 4161 bases long encoding 1387 amino acids. The neutralizing epitope of Korean PEDV (K-COE) was expressed in tobacco plants using Agrobacterium-mediated protein transformation. The recombinant K-COE constituted up to 0.1% of the total soluble protein in the leaves of transgenic tobacco plants. The result of this study opens the way for the development of an edible vaccine against PEDV infection in Korea.