Attenuation of Marek's disease virus by codon pair deoptimization of a core gene

Marek's disease virus (MDV) is an oncogenic alphaherpesvirus of Gallus gallus, the domesticated chicken. Control strategies rely upon vaccination with live attenuated viruses of antigenically similar avian herpesviruses or attenuated strains of MDV. Recent studies in other viruses have shown that recoding certain viral genes to employ synonymous but rarely-used codon pairs resulted in viral attenuation. We deoptimized two MDV proteins, UL54/ICP27 and UL49/VP22, and demonstrate that the more severely deoptimized variant of UL54 accumulates significantly less gene product in vitro. Using these UL54 deoptimized mutants, we further demonstrate that animals infected with the UL54-recoded recombinant virus exhibited decreased viral genome copy number in lymphocytes, reduced lymphoid atrophy and reduced tumor incidence. This study demonstrates that codon pair deoptimization of a single viral gene can produce attenuated strains of MDV. This approach may be useful as a rational way of making novel live attenuated virus vaccines for MDV. •We deoptimized two Marek's disease virus proteins, UL54/ICP27 and UL49/VP22.•Codon pair deoptimization of a single gene can produce attenuated strains of Marek's disease virus.•We developed a dual expression plasmid that avoids localization with gene of interest.•We presented codon pair bias scores for 18,595 Gallus gallus and 86 Marek's disease virus genes.