title: New complete genome sequences of human rhinoviruses shed light on their phylogeny and genomic features.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Human rhinoviruses (HRV), the most frequent cause of respiratory infections, include 99 different serotypes segregating into two species, A and B. Rhinoviruses share extensive genomic sequence similarity with enteroviruses and both are part of the picornavirus family. Nevertheless they differ significantly at the phenotypic level. The lack of HRV full-length genome sequences and the absence of analysis comparing picornaviruses at the whole genome level limit our knowledge of the genomic features supporting these differences.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Here we report complete genome sequences of 12 HRV-A and HRV-B serotypes, more than doubling the current number of available HRV sequences. The whole-genome maximum-likelihood phylogenetic analysis suggests that HRV-B and human enteroviruses (HEV) diverged from the last common ancestor after their separation from HRV-A. On the other hand, compared to HEV, HRV-B are more related to HRV-A in the capsid and 3B-C regions. We also identified the presence of a 2C cis-acting replication element (cre) in HRV-B that is not present in HRV-A, and that had been previously characterized only in HEV. In contrast to HEV viruses, HRV-A and HRV-B share also markedly lower GC content along the whole genome length.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings provide basis to speculate about both the biological similarities and the differences (e.g. tissue tropism, temperature adaptation or acid lability) of these three groups of viruses.
authors.affiliation: Central Laboratory of Virology, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Geneva Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland. caroline.tapparel@hcuge.ch
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tapparel
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Junier
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gerlach
authors.forename: Samuel
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cordey
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Van Belle
authors.forename: Luc
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Perrin
authors.forename: Evgeny M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Zdobnov
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kaiser
mesh_terms: D001482:Base Composition; D001483:Base Sequence; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D016679:Genome, Viral; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D010802:Phylogeny; D050436:Regulatory Elements, Transcriptional; D012229:Rhinovirus / Q000235:genetics*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D012703:Serotyping; D020506:Untranslated Regions / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D020506:Untranslated Regions