Sequence conservation of human cytomegalovirus UL140 open reading frame in clinical strains.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the variability of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) UL140 open reading frame (ORF) in clinical strains, and to explore the relationship between the variability of UL140 ORF and different symptoms of HC-MV infection.


METHODS
HCMV UL140 ORF was amplified by polymerase chain reaction and sequenced selectedly in 30 clinical strains.


RESULTS
UL140 ORF of all clinical strains was amplified successfully. Compared with that of Toledo strain, the nucleotide and amino acid sequence identities among all strains were 96.5%-100.0% and 95.2%-100.0%, respectively. All of the nucleotide changes were substitutions. The post-translational modification sites were conserved. The result of phylogenetic tree showed that the strains did not cluster according to different clinical symptoms.


CONCLUSIONS
HCMV UL140 ORF in clinical strains is highly conserved, which may play an important role in HC-MV infection.
Qi
Ying
Y
Virus Laboratory, Shengjing Hospital, China Medical University, Shenyang 110004. qiyingying163@163.com
Ma
Yan-ping
YP
He
Rong
R
Sun
Zheng-rong
ZR
Ji
Yao-hua
YH
Huang
Yu-jing
YJ
Ruan
Qiang
Q
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001483:Base Sequence; D003587:Cytomegalovirus / Q000235:genetics*; D017931:DNA Primers; D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000235:genetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D014764:Viral Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*
D017931:DNA Primers; D004279:DNA, Viral; D014764:Viral Proteins