Abstract
Swine acute diarrhea syndrome (SADS) is a highly contagious infectious disease characterized by acute vomiting and watery diarrhea in neonatal piglets. The causative agent for SADS is the swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV), an alphacoronavirus in the family Coronaviridae. Currently, SADS-CoV was identified only in Guangdong and Fujian provinces of China, not in any other regions or countries in the world. To explore the genetic diversity of SADS-CoV isolates, herein we comparatively analyzed 44 full-length genomes of viruses isolated in Guangdong and Fujian provinces during 2017–2019. The spike glycoprotein gene of SADS-CoV strain CH/FJWT/2018 isolated in Fujian province is distinct from that of other viral isolates in either spike glycoprotein gene-based phylogenetic analysis or whole genome-based gene similarity analysis. Moreover, at least 7 predicted linear B cell epitopes in the spike glycoprotein of CH/FJWT/2018 would be affected by amino acid variations when compared with a representative virus isolated in Guangdong province. The spike glycoprotein of coronaviruses determines viral host range and tissue tropism during virus infection via specific interactions with the cellular receptor and also plays critical roles in eliciting the production of neutralizing antibodies. Since SADS-CoVs have a broad cell tropism, the results in this report further emphasize that the spike glycoprotein gene is a pivotal target in the surveillance of SADS-CoV.
Highlights
The swine acute diarrhea syndrome (SADS) was first reported in Guangdong province, China in 2017 [1,2,3]
To comparatively analyze genetic characteristics of Swine acute diarrhea syndrome (SADS)-CoVs, we performed a phylogenetic analysis based on the full-length genome sequence of viral strains isolated in China
Results show that the virus CH/FJWT/2018 isolated in Fujian province (GenBank accession number MH615810.1) represents a lineage distinct from other viruses isolated in China in both whole genome-based (Figure 1A) and complete S glycoprotein open reading frames (ORFs)-based (Figure 1B) phylogenetic trees
Summary
The swine acute diarrhea syndrome (SADS) was first reported in Guangdong province, China in 2017 [1,2,3]. It is a highly contagious infectious disease that is characterized by acute vomiting and watery diarrhea in neonatal piglets, which leads to high mortality and significant economic losses for the local pork industry. Scale bars indicate the number of inferred substitutions per site. The tree is drawn to scale, with branch lengths in the same units as those of the evolutionary distances used to infer the phylogenetic tree. Evolutionary distances were computed using the Maximum Composite Likelihood method [17]
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