Summary: Monoclonal antibodies (MAb) against measles virus, distemper virus and rinderpest virus were used to demonstrate antigenic relationship and differences between all four morbilliviruses (measles, distemper, rinderpest and peste des petits ruminants viruses). From this, it was shown that con stituent virion proteins of these morbilliviruses were related antigenically as well as physico-chemically, with exception of distemper virus H pro tein on which none of epitopes detected by monoclonal antibodies were shared with H proteins of other viruses. The F protein of the viruses showed greatest degree of epitope homology between morbillivirus types, while H protein epitopes were mostly type-specific. The internal virion proteins — M, P and NP — carried both type-specific and crossreactive epitopes. Most of epitopes had been identified using competition assays; but differences in reactivity of certain MAb against different isola tes showed that antibodies previously thought to be recognising identical epi topes were probably reacting with spatially very close epitopes. From this work, it has been possible to accurately differentiate morbilliviruses, and to extend this to separation of isolates through assigning particular anti genic fingerprints to each morbillivirus isolate. Thus accurate epidemiologi cal analyses can be performed, and a particularly useful ELISA for rapid and accurate differentiation of rinderpest viruses from peste des petits rumi nants viruses has been developed. The work is discussed in terms of current application of MAb to identification of protective humoral immune mechanisms, virion epitopes of relevance to this, and capacity of morbilliviruses to attack host defences, producing characteristic depression of immune responsiveness.
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McCullough et al. (1986) studied this question.