Abstract
Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) causes enzootic bovine leucosis and is widely spread worldwide, except several European countries, Australia and New Zealand. Although BLV is highly prevalent in China, information about the genetic diversity and evolutionary dynamics of BLV among Chinese dairy herds is still lacking. To determine the genetic variability of BLV, 219 cows from four cities of Ningxia province of China were screened for BLV infection by fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-PCR and sequencing, 16 selected positive samples were subjected to molecular characterization. Phylogenetic analysis using the neighbor-joining (NJ) method on complete sequences of envelope (env) gene of BLV obtained from China and those available in GenBank (representing BLV genotypes 1–10) revealed that those Chinese strains belonged to genotypes 4 and 6. Totally, 23 mutations were identified and 16 of them were determined to be unique mutations among Chinese strains. Alignment of the deduced amino acid sequences demonstrated six mutations in glycoprotein 51 (gp51) and three mutations in glycoprotein 30 (gp30) located in the identified neutralizing domain (ND), CD8+ T cell epitope, E-epitope, B-epitope, gp51N12 and cytoplasmic domain of transmembrane protein. This study reported for the first time the BLV genotype 4 in China, and further studies are warranted to compare its immunogenicity and pathogenicity with other BLV genotypes.
Highlights
Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is the causative agent of enzootic bovine leucosis (EBL), and approximately 30% of infected cattle develop persistent lymphocytosis (PL) while a small percentage of infected cattle die from malignant lymphoma
This study reported for the first time the BLV genotype 4 in China, and further studies are warranted to compare its immunogenicity and pathogenicity with other BLV genotypes
Main text Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is the causative agent of enzootic bovine leucosis (EBL), and approximately 30% of infected cattle develop persistent lymphocytosis (PL) while a small percentage of infected cattle die from malignant lymphoma
Summary
Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is the causative agent of enzootic bovine leucosis (EBL), and approximately 30% of infected cattle develop persistent lymphocytosis (PL) while a small percentage of infected cattle die from malignant lymphoma. A neighborjoining phylogenetic tree based on the env gene complete sequences (1,548 bp) of the Chinese strains and 37 reference strains representing BLV genotypes 1 to 10 from 14 countries demonstrated that three Chinese strains (MK820044, MK840877 and MK840879) belonged to genotype 4 and the remaining four (MK840875, MK840876, MK840878 and MK840880) belonged to genotype 6 (Fig. 1). For those three Chinese strains clustered into BLV genotype 4, the mean distance of the env nucleotides and the deduced amino acid (AA) were 0.003 ± 0.001 and 0.008 ± 0.004 between these strains, respectively (Table 2).
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