ABSTRACT
Avipoxviruses from different geographic regions of the world have been characterized to study their genetic and biological properties, but so far, no such work has been performed on Egyptian isolates. Lesions suggestive of avian pox; found on Egyptian wild dove; were used for isolation of pox virus in a previous study. The resulting virus was propagated in chorio-allantoic membrane [CAM] of specific pathogen free [SPF] Embryonated chicken eggs [ECE]. PCR was carried out on the DNA of the dove poxvirus [DPV], pigeon poxvirus [PPV] and a vaccinal strain of fowl pox virus [FPV], then restriction fragment length polymorphism [RFLP] assay was carried out on the resulting amplicons of 578 bp length; using EcoRV and NlaIII restriction enzymes. The restriction profile revealed that the dove pox virus is identical to the PPV and both are different from FPV. The results of immunoblotting analysis of the 3 pox viruses against chicken anti FPV revealed that in spite of the minor antigenic differences observed between them the DPV is closely related to the PPV. In conclusion the Egyptian wild doves are found to play a serious role in the epidemiology of PPV among pigeon flocks