Abstract
Chicken anemia virus (CAV) causes diseases in young chickens, which include increased pathogenicity of secondary infectious agents, generalized lymphoid depletion, and immunodepression. In the present study, we have identified 22 CAV strains isolated from several commercial chicken farms in Northern China during 2014–2015. In addition, two CAVs were also isolated from stray mouse and dog feces, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first report of identification of CAV from mouse and dog feces. Phylogenetic analysis of 121 full-length CAV genome sequences showed that all available CAV could be classified into eight lineages, supported by phylogenetic trees estimated using different methods. Furthermore, the 24 novel CAV sequences scattered across different branches, lack of clear spatio-temporal distribution characterization. Analysis of the 450 amino acids of VP1 protein identified 33 amino acid substitutions that were specific for CAVs from northern China. Putative gene recombination events were also detected in the genomes of newly isolated CAVs. In particular, a putative recombinant event was detected in the CAV-Dog genome with high statistical support. In summary, we established a robust classification system for CAV, revealed additional genomic diversity of CAV, and therefore, warranted additional efforts to explore CAV genomics and epidemiology.
Highlights
Chicken anemia virus (CAV) was first isolated in Japan in 1979 (Yuasa et al, 1979) and has been commonly identified, since in chicken populations worldwide (Rosenberger and Cloud, 1989; Zhou et al, 1996; Ducatez et al, 2005; Natesan et al, 2006; Craig et al, 2009; Kim et al, 2010; Zhang et al, 2013)
We described the characteristics of 24 novel strains of full-length CAV genome sequences, including two strains isolated from mice and dog feces
Based on the most comprehensive phylogenetic analysis to date, we proposed a more robust classification of CAV, which consisted of eight major lineages
Summary
Chicken anemia virus (CAV) was first isolated in Japan in 1979 (Yuasa et al, 1979) and has been commonly identified, since in chicken populations worldwide (Rosenberger and Cloud, 1989; Zhou et al, 1996; Ducatez et al, 2005; Natesan et al, 2006; Craig et al, 2009; Kim et al, 2010; Zhang et al, 2013). Chicken anemia virus currently belongs to the Gyrovirus genus, Anelloviridae family (Rosario et al, 2017). The CAV genome consists of a single molecule of circular (covalently closed end) single-stranded ambisense or negative sense (genus Gyrovirus) DNA (Ducatez et al, 2005), encoding peptides of 51.6 (VP1), 24 (VP2), and 13.6 (VP3) kDa, respectively (Noteborn et al, 1991). VP1 is the major viral structural protein, and is associated with viral replication, cell infection ability and virulence (Renshaw et al, 1996; Yamaguchi et al, 2001; Todd et al, 2002). The amino acid composition of CAV is Genomic Characterization of CAV Isolates very conservative, with only VP1 displaying significant variability in certain regions (e.g., amino acid positions139∼151) (Schat, 2003)
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