Abstract
BackgroundRabies virus (RV), the agent of rabies, can cause a severe encephalomyelitis in several species of mammals, including humans. As a human rabies vaccine strain employed in China, the genetic knowledge of the aG strain has not been fully studied. The main goal of the present study is to amplify the whole genome of aG strain, and genetic relationships between other vaccine strains and wild strains were analyzed.ResultsThe entire genome of human rabies virus vaccine strain aG employed in China was sequenced; this is the second rabies virus vaccine strain from China to be fully characterized. The overall organization and the length of the genome were similar to that of other lyssaviruses. The length of aG strain was 11925nt, comprising a leader sequence of 58nt, nucleoprotein (N) gene of 1353nt, phosphoprotein (P) gene of 894 nt, matrix protein (M) gene of 609nt, glycoprotein (G) gene of 1575nt, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp,L) gene of 6384nt, and a trailer region of 70 nt. There was TGAAAAAAA (TGA7) consensus sequence in the end of each gene, except AGA7 at the end of G gene. There was AACAYYYCT consensus start signal at the beginning of each gene.ConclusionsIn this report, we analyzed the full genome of China human rabies vaccine strain aG. Our studies indicated that the genome of aG retained the basic characteristics of RV. At gene level, N was the most conserved among the five coding genes, indicating this gene is the most appropriate for quantitative genotype definition. The phylogenetic analysis of the N indicated the aG strain clustered most closely with Japanese and Russian rabies vaccine strains, suggesting that they may share the same ancestor; also, the aG strain did not share high homology with wild strains isolated from China, making it may not be the best vaccine strain, more research is needed to elucidate the genetic relationship among the RV circulating in China.
Highlights
Rabies virus (RV), the agent of rabies, can cause a severe encephalomyelitis in several species of mammals, including humans
2.2 Primer design According to the conserved regions of the genome of rabies virus published in GenBank, particular the RCHL(Genbank number: AB009663), RV-97(Genbank number EF542830), Nishigahara(Genbank number: AB044824) and NI-CE(Genbank number: Ab128149), 12 pairs of primers were designed to amplify the unknown regions of aG strain by primer premier 5.0 software (Table 1)
3.1 Genome organization of the aG strain Using a total of 24 primers the strain aG genome was obtained as 12 separate overlapping PCR products
Summary
Rabies virus (RV), the agent of rabies, can cause a severe encephalomyelitis in several species of mammals, including humans. As a human rabies vaccine strain employed in China, the genetic knowledge of the aG strain has not been fully studied. The complete genome sequence of CTN strain has been sequenced already [4]. Novel vaccines, such as oral vaccine and live attenuated vaccine have been developed in recent years, the virus strain used for the production of vaccine are still pathogenic for laboratory and wildlife spices, what is more important, these rabies vaccines have the potential of causing vaccine-induced rabies and appear to have limited efficacy in a broad spectrum of animal species [5]. Comparison of sequence of vaccine strain and field strain circulating in the country would prove how effective of the vaccine against the field virus [6]
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