Abstract
African swine fever (ASF) has emerged as a preeminent threat to worldwide pork production. Research and diagnostics of ASF virus (ASFV) is dependent upon culturing virus in primary cells, such as peripheral blood macrophages (PBMC) derived from swine blood, or pulmonary alveolar macrophages (PAM) extracted from swine lungs. The methodologies for production of these cells can be laborious, requiring significant investment in vivarium, personnel, and technical resources. As an alternative, the buffy coat cell fraction from blood contains a mixture of cell types, including undifferentiated monocytes that can be easily isolated by centrifugation. Herein, we culture buffy coat cells in macrophage (M∅) base media, containing L929 conditioned media to induce monocyte differentiation and enhance sensitivity to ASFV. Culturing the buffy coat cell fraction in M∅ base media enhanced the abundance of rosettes and number of detectable ASFV genome copies relative to buffy coat cells grown without L929 conditioned media. Buffy coat fraction cells were used to propagate ASFV directly from blood of infected swine and subsequent sequencing of extracted viral DNA yielded full genome coverage and identification of point mutations. This work demonstrated that growing ASFV in cells of the buffy coat fraction for pig blood was an effective alternative to using the traditionally isolated primary cell types for ASFV propagation, isolation, and sequencing.