Molecular characterization and phylogenetic analysis of acute bee paralysis virus collected from some important beekeeping provinces of Iran

Abstract

Viruses are the most infectious agents in honey bees (Apis mellifera L.). Acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV) is one of the honey bee viruses. ABPV is a small single-stranded RNA virus. The aim of this study is molecular detection of the aforementioned viruses and phylogenetic analysis of ABPV in Iran. Samples were taken from 89 suspected apiaries of four important beekeeping provinces (Mazandaran, Khorasan Razavi, Hormozgan, and Kurdistan). ABPV was detected in the samples with RT-PCR and sequencing was confirmed for all positive samples. In this research, we studied the phylogenetic analysis of ABPV. Nucleotide sequence analyses were used to identify ABPV and phylogenetic analysis was 94.5% to 98.9% identical to the reference strains. IR-APV-GMG-1 and IR-APV-GMG-3 showed maximum nucleotide sequence similarity to Hungary 1 (accession number: AF486072) from Hungary, but IR-APV-GMG-2 had no similarity to reference strains, forming a distinct group. The phylogenetic tree for the molecular relationship between the above viruses was drawn. This study of the phylogenetic analysis of ABPV indicates the presence of this virus and reveals its similarity to European-origin-related viruses.