title: Mayaro virus: complete nucleotide sequence and phylogenetic relationships with other alphaviruses.
abstract: Mayaro (MAY) virus is a member of the genus Alphavirus in the family Togaviridae. Alphaviruses are distributed throughout the world and cause a wide range of diseases in humans and animals. Here, we determined the complete nucleotide sequence of MAY from a viral strain isolated from a French Guianese patient. The deduced MAY genome was 11,429 nucleotides in length, excluding the 5' cap nucleotide and 3' poly(A) tail. Nucleotide and amino acid homologies, as well as phylogenetic analyses of the obtained sequence confirmed that MAY is not a recombinant virus and belongs to the Semliki Forest complex according to the antigenic complex classification. Furthermore, analyses based on the E1 region revealed that MAY is closely related to Una virus, the only other South American virus clustering with the Old World viruses. On the basis of our results and of the alphaviruses diversity and pathogenicity, we suggest that alphaviruses may have an Old World origin.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Rétrovirologie, Institut Pasteur de la Guyane, 23 avenue Pasteur, BP6010, 97306 Cayenne cedex, French Guiana.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lavergne
authors.forename: Benoît
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: de Thoisy
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Lacoste
authors.forename: Hervé
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Pascalis
authors.forename: Jean-François
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Pouliquen
authors.forename: Véronique
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Mercier
authors.forename: Hugues
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tolou
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dussart
authors.forename: Jacques
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Morvan
authors.forename: Antoine
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Talarmin
authors.forename: Mirdad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kazanji
mesh_terms: D000524:Alphavirus / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D001483:Base Sequence; D014644:Genetic Variation; D016679:Genome, Viral; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid