ABSTRACT
Objective To study the genomic molecular organization and genotype of human astro-virus infected infants in Shanghai of China. Methods Based on the published genomic sequence of HAstV (GenBank), the whole genome of one isolate human astrovirus was sequenced by specific primers. The PCR-products were cloned to pMD18-T vector and sequenced, phylogenetic tree was constructed by the Neighbor-Joining method with MEGA 4 software. Results The genome of HAstV-SH is 6807 hp, contains three ORFs: ORF1a and 1b encode the non-structural protein (from 83 nt to 4372 nt), ORF2 encodes the structural protein (from 4364 nt to 6727 nt). Compared with the ORF2 gene of those eight astrovirus sero-types in GenBank, revealed that the highest homology is with genotype 1 (97%). Homology with other gen-otypes ranged between 63% and 70%. Conclusion HAstV-SH belonged to genotype 1 and closely clus-tered with a strain of Japan (AB009985).