Complete Genomic Sequence of a Chinese Isolate of Duck Hepatitis Virus / 中国病毒学

ABSTRACT

The complete genomic sequence of Duck hepatitis virus 1 (DHV-1) ZJ-V isolate was sequenced and determined to be 7 691 nucleotides (nt) in length with a 5'-terminal un-translated region (UTR) of 626 nt and a 3'-terminal UTR of 315 nt (not including the poly(A) tail). One large open reading frame (ORF) was found within the genome (nt 627 to 7 373) coding for a polypeptide of 2 249amino acids. Our data also showed that the poly (A) tail of DHV-1 has at least 22 A's. Sequence comparison revealed significant homology (from 91.9% to 95.7%) between the protein sequences of the virus in the Picornaviridae family, its genome showed some unique characteristics. DHV-1 contains 3copies of the 2A gene and only 1 copy of the 3B gene, and its 3'-NCR is longer than those of other picornaviruses. Phylogenetic analysis to do sequence homology based on the VP1 protein sequences showed that the ZJ-V isolate shares high sequence homology with the reported DHV-1 isolates (from 92.9% to 99.2%), indicating that DHV-1 is genetically stable.