Abstract
Bovine herpesvirus type 1 (BHV-1) DNA molecules obtained from a limited number of infected cells were cleaved with a variety of restriction endonucleases. By use of selected DNA fragments in Bgl l, Pst l, Pvu l and Pvu ll restriction patterns, one reference, two vaccine and three wild-type strains of BHV-1 were distinguished from one another. The simplified DNA fingerprinting method described here should be most useful, not only to control the genetic stability of BHV-1 vaccines during production, but also to differentiate the vaccine strains from other isolates in clinical cases.