Genome Sequencing of Human Cytomegalovirus Strain LCW and Identification of Asia-specific Cluster

ABSTRACT

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a ubiquitous human pathogen and contains double stranded DNA genome with approximately 230 kbp. Molecular genomic studies of HCMV have been attempted in order to understand the pathogenesis and evolution of HCMV. However, studies on HCMV strains of Asian origin are limited. In this study, it was attempted to understand the genomics of HCMV isolated from Korea. Clinical strain LCW isolated from Korean patient was passaged in vitro cell culture, and subjected to next-generation sequencing. Complete genome sequence was obtained and compared with other HCMV strains. The LCW genome was found to contain 170 open reading frames (ORFs) and two ORF (RL5A and RL13) of the strain LCW were found to be truncated due to early stop codon. Phylogenetic analysis suggested that the strain LCW was closely related with Asian strains such as HCMV strains JHC and HAN. Common nucleotide sequences among the 3 Asian strains distinguishable from other strains were detected at 197 sites including 104 sites in ORFs.