ABSTRACT
Avian influenza viruses A/turkey/Almaty/535/04 (H11N9) and A/herring gull/Atyrau/2186/07 (H11N2) isolated in Kazakhstan were characterized as low pathogenic in biological and genetic studies. Putative glycosylation sites were identical to the putative sites in published H11, N2, and N9 isolates sequences. Compared with published data no additional basic amino acid residues were found in the hemagglutinin (HA) cleavage site of these Kazakhstan strains. Phylogenetic analysis revealed a rare case of Eurasian-American reassortment in the HA gene of A/herring gull/Atyrau/2186/07 (H11N2) virus and significant sequence difference of the HA and the neuraminidase genes of the virus A/turkey/Almaty/535/04 (H11N9) from the previously published GenBank viruses.
