Authors: Hongyan Xia Lihong Liu AnnaMalin Linde Sándor Belák Heléne Norder Frederik Widén
Publish Date: 2008/08/01
Volume: 37, Issue: 1, Pages: 39-48
Abstract
Hepatitis E virus HEV has been detected in humans and in a broad range of animals including pigs For the first time the fulllength genomic sequence of a HEV of European porcine origin termed swX07E1 was determined Comparative analysis of 76 complete or nearly complete nucleotide sequences showed that swX07E1 shares the highest nucleotide identity with Japanese swine HEV swJ85 and swJ124 The wholegenome phylogenetic analysis showed that swX07E1 from Europe belongs to genotype3 HEV clusters with variants from Japan Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan in subgroup 3c but it is divergent from the prototype US HEV Our analysis indicates that swX07E1 represents a new subgroup of genotype3 and that analysis of fulllength sequences is necessary to discover new subgroups of HEV According to our knowledge swX07E1 is the first fulllength genome sequence of HEV from European swine Knowledge about the full length HEV sequence from European swine is very important for understanding the HEV evolutionary events and the molecular mechanism of infection in human and in animalsThis work was supported by the European Union project “Pathogen Combat” contract number FOODCT2005007081 and European Union Network of Excellence “Network for the prevention and control of Zoonoses MedVetNet” contract number 506122 Support was also received from the “Ivar och Elsa Sandberg’s foundation” Sweden
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