title: Molecular analysis of duck hepatitis virus type 1 indicates that it should be assigned to a new genus.
abstract: The genome sequences of three duck hepatitis virus type 1 (DHV-1) strains were determined. Comparative sequence analyses showed that they possessed a typical picornavirus genome organization apart from the unique possession of three in-tandem 2A genes. The 2A1 protein of DHV-1 is an aphthovirus-like 2A protein; the 2A2 protein is not related to any known picornavirus protein; the 2A3 protein is a human parechovirus-like 2A protein. Several other features were found to be unique to the DHV-1 genome when compared with other picornaviruses: (i) the 3' UTR of DHV-1 was composed of 314 nt, the largest among the picornaviruses; (ii) pair-wise amino acid sequence identities between polyprotein of DHV-1 and other picornaviruses are all less than 30%. The pair-wise amino acid sequence identities in the 3D region of DHV-1 with LV and HPeV-1 is only 38.6 and 36.6%, respectively, and less than 30% with all other picornaviruses; (iii) the DHV-1 capsid polypeptide VP0 is not proteolytically cleaved into VP4 and VP2; and (iv) phylogenetic and evolutionary analysis of DHV-1 reveals a new picornavirus clade. It is therefore proposed that DHV-1 should be assigned to a new genus in the Picornaviridae.
authors.affiliation: Graduate Institute of Veterinary Medicine, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 106, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chun-Hsien
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Tseng
authors.forename: Nick J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Knowles
authors.forename: Hsiang-Jung
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Tsai
mesh_terms: D020413:3' Untranslated Regions / Q000235:genetics; D000569:Americas; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D036022:Capsid Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D003546:Cysteine Endopeptidases / Q000235:genetics; D016679:Genome, Viral; D004371:Hepatitis Virus, Duck / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D010802:Phylogeny; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000737:chemistry; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D013045:Species Specificity; D013624:Taiwan; D006113:United Kingdom; D014764:Viral Proteins / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D020413:3' Untranslated Regions; D036022:Capsid Proteins; D012367:RNA, Viral; D014764:Viral Proteins; D003546:Cysteine Endopeptidases; C057400:picornain 2A, Picornavirus