Improved methods for the purification and enrichment of banana streak virus for antibody production and protein detection

The purification of viruses from bananas is a complex and laborious process due to the large quantities of polysaccharides and secondary metabolites in the plant tissue. The banana streak viruses (BSVs) are generally difficult to purify to a level that allows generation of high quality antisera. This study presents an improved method of purification of Banana streak MY virus (BSMYV), which allowed us to generate highly specific chicken and rabbit antisera and to detect the capsid proteins for the first time. Finally, we demonstrate further enrichment of BSMYV by isoelectric focusing.