Yogyakarta - Balinese Cow (bos javanicus) is Indonesian germ plasm with good reproduction characters subsequently easily developed and deployed to various places as a potential livestock. However, one disease affecting the Balinese cow and causing many deaths are Jembrana diseases or Jembrana disease virus (JDV). This disease could result in quite high death rate. Even within 9 months it quickly spreads into many regions in Bali which resulted in the deaths of 60 thousand cows and creates substantial economic losses.
The commonly used Jembrana disease diagnosis method is a clinical diagnosis based on clinical symptoms of disease symptoms as well as immunological diagnostic techniques. The clinical diagnosis is difficult to implement because the symptoms resemble other diseases. Moreover, it can only be implemented against acute Jembrana disease. As for the immunological diagnosis that is still often implemented are serologically (ELISA and precipitation antigen) as well as genomics (RT-PCR and Real-time RT-PCR).
Lecturer of pathology section, UGM Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, drh. Bambang Sutrisno, M.P, succeeded in developing Jembrana disease virus detection by dot blot hybridization technique. Probe design can be used as a diagnostic tool with high specificity because the probe can detect virus’s RNA with total RNA isolation results. "The candidate of this screening method is a fairly good sample when compared with ELISA," he said.
He explained, this diagnostic technique is based on genomic approaches that can be developed and used for rapid and accurate detection. In his research, Bambang used reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction techniques (RT-PCR). But the primary used in the technique used gag -ca gene which is one of the sequences of genes that are important in the process of viral infection.
However, the presence of gag-ca gene copy in the infected host cell is considered to be quite large because of their role as gene involved in the formation of virus structures and determine the ability of viruses to infect target cells. "Hence, Dot-blot hybridization is required as a second technique which is applied parallel," he said.
With dot blot hybridization technique, allowing tens and hundreds of samples analyzed in the same time using a single membrane. So, this technique is expected to help the animal routine health examination and Jembrana disease control activities.
In the doctoral open examination, acting as a promoter is Dr. drh. Asmarani Kusumawadini, M.P, and co-promoter Prof. drh. Hastari Wuryastuty, M.Sc., Ph.D., and Dr. Sri Widodo.