Comparative Sequence Analysis of Genes Encoding Outer Proteins of African Swine Fever Virus Isolates from Different Regions of Russian Federation and Armenia

Abstract

African swine fever (ASF) is an economically important disease of domestic pigs. ASF is endemic in most of sub-Saharan Africa, including Madagascar Island; the highest incidence of disease being recorded from the West and East Africa to the Southern Africa. Disease outbreaks have also occurred in Europe, South America and the Caribbean. In 2007 it was introduced into Georgia, and has since spread throughout the Caucasus and into southern Russia. There is no vaccine or treatment available to control ASF virus. Therefore timely ASFV detection and characterization are critical to understand and contain its spread. In this report, we describe the nucleotide structure analysis of genes E183L, KP177R and O61R encoding for proteins p54, p22 and p12, respectively, for different ASFV isolates collected within three years from South European regions of Russia and Armenia. The comparative analysis of these demonstrated variability in p12 sequences of the isolates from different geographic regions and hosts, whereas p54 and p22 sequences were conserved among the isolates. However, hydropathy profile analyses did not reveal any structural variations for all three proteins. It suggests that p12 genes, but not p54 and p22 genes, is under strong selective pressure and can be a valuable genomic marker for studying of evolutionary pathways and genetic diversity of ASFV isolates.