Abstract
Getah virus (GETV) has caused many outbreaks in animals in recent years. Monitoring of the virus and its related diseases is crucial to control the transmission of the virus. In the summer of 2018, we conducted routine tests on clinical samples from different pig farms in Guangxi province, South China, and isolated and characterized a GETV strain, named GX201808. Cytopathic effects were observed in BHK-21 cells inoculated with GX201808. The expression of E2 protein of GETV could be detected in virus-infected cells by indirect immunofluorescence assays. Electron microscopic analysis showed that the virus particles were spherical and ~70 nm in diameter with featured surface fibers. The multistep growth curves showed the virus propagated well in the BHK-21 cells. Molecular genetic analysis revealed that GX201808 belongs to Group 3, represented by Kochi-01-2005 isolated in Japan in 2005, and it clustered closely with the recently reported Chinese strains isolated from pigs, cattle, and foxes. A comparison of the identities of nucleotides and amino acids in the coding regions demonstrated that the GX201808 showed the highest amino acid identity (99.6%) with the HuN1 strain, a highly pathogenic isolate resulting in an outbreak of GETV infection in swine herds in Hunan province in 2017. In the present study, GETV was identified and isolated for the first time in Guangxi province of southern China, suggesting that future surveillance of this virus should be strengthened.
Highlights
Getah virus (GETV) is an enveloped, single-stranded positive-sense RNA virus
One GETV-positive sample (GX201807) was collected from 42 weaning piglets of ∼25 days old, which only exhibited fever for 1–2 days in a swine herd in Nanning, Guangxi Province, which has a total piglet population of 307. Another GETV-positive sample (GX201808) was collected from 12 pregnant sows suffering from reproductive disorders in a pig farm located in YuLin, Guangxi Province, which has a total sow population of 196
immunofluorescence assays (IFAs) analysis was conducted using an antiGETV-E2 PcAb to confirm the isolation of the GETV strain
Summary
Getah virus (GETV) is an enveloped, single-stranded positive-sense RNA virus. GETV is a member of the genus Alphavirus in the family Togaviridae, which are transmitted mostly by various mosquito species [1]. The virus comprises a genome of ∼11.7 kb containing a 5′-untranslated region (UTR), two large open reading frames (ORFs), a 3′-UTR, and a poly-A tail [2]. The ORF1 is situated at the 5′-end of the genome and encodes non-structural polyproteins (nsP1 to nsP4). The ORF2 is located at the 3′-end of the genome and encodes structural polyproteins that are transcribed into five structural proteins, namely, C, E3, E2, 6K, and E1, respectively [3, 4]. GETV has been shown to be distributed widely in the Asiatic, Australia, and Eurasian regions since the prototype GETV strain (MM2021) was first isolated from mosquitoes in Malaysia in 1955
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